Labor Force Participation Matches Previous Low

by JASmius

How's a 41.0% unemployment rate sound, folks? (via Newsmax Insider):

A record 92.26 million Americans ages 16 and over did not have a job last month and the labor force participation rate stood at 62.8%, matching a 36-year low.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment figures are based on the "civilian non-institutional population," which consists of all Americans 16 or older who are not in the military or an institution such as a prison, mental hospital, or nursing home.

Those who did not have a job and did not actively seek one in August are not considered to be in the labor force, along with retirees, students, and Americans collecting disability benefits.

Of the 155.9 million who did participate in the labor force, 146.3 million had a job and 9.5 million were out of work but actively sought a job.

Trust me, ladies and gentlemen, one does not stop "actively seeking" a job when one's unemployment benefits run out.  It's just that when one's unemployment benefits run out, the government - especially this one - no longer has any reason to track you.  And so you disappear.  You become a non-entity.  A vocational chimera.  You.  No.  Longer.  Exist.

And, conveniently enough, the "official" unemployment rate continues to plummet.

Is the real unemployment rate 41%?  No; when just us non-persons are figured in, the real unemployment rate free-falls to a microscopic....19.5%.  A veritable Great Depressionistic drop in the bucket.

The Heritage Foundation has, as Paul Harvey used to say, "the rest of the story":

A report from the Heritage Foundation cited several reasons for the drop in labor force participation. For one, baby boomers are aging and more likely to retire. Also, school attendance is up, and many more Americans are collecting Social Security disability insurance — 6% of U.S. adults are now collecting those benefits.

"The difficulty of finding a job drives both these changes," observes James Sherk, senior policy analyst in labor economics at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis.

"The labor market remains weak not because of layoffs — which have sunk to pre-recession levels — but because job creation and new hiring have fallen."

He adds that "the government's responses have been ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst," noting that Obamacare has made hiring more expensive. [emphases added]

It's as I've been saying for longer than I can remember: Under Obamanomics, the rich get richer if they sell out to the Regime, a little poorer if they don't, but everybody else is either desperately hanging on or, like me, has had the economic ground crumble out from under them, and the length of time until the "splat" of bankruptcy is determined by the degree of one's "save for a rainy day" prudence and frugality.

And there's no end in sight, no relief on the horizon, no jobs to be had, and no way out.  Period.

In case anybody is wondering where my robust abundance of "negativity" comes from, now you know, as well as how well-earned and justified it really is.