The entire Democrat and media establishment, but I repeat myself, has been lying to the nation to protect one man, Joe Biden, and they trot out Obama with this liberal projection to gaslight the voters one more time

Biden Fights for Ordinary People While Trump Is Out for Himself -- Barack Obama, X

This hopium peddler sat idly by while hopeless ordinary people had to join the greatest exodus from the labor force in the history of the post-war.

 

Now millions of illegals have been brought in under Joe Biden to take their place at much lower wages.

 

Democrats to ordinary people: You're chumps!

 

 

The unemployment rate rose to 3.8%, but not because people lost jobs

 The unemployment rate rose to 3.786% from 3.495% on a bigger 736k increase to the size of the labor force than to the employment level, not because people lost jobs.

The employment level actually made a new high in August 2023, but up a smaller 222k. 

The unemployment rate went up in August because record new high employment in August, 161.484m, is a smaller percentage of a new larger labor force in August, 167.839m than was the case in July: 96.2% in August vs. 96.5% in July = 3.8% and 3.5% unemployed respectively. 

And do not mix the limited Establishment Survey (122,000 businesses and agencies) total nonfarm jobs oranges (156.419m) with the unemployment rate Household Survey (60,000 households) whole universe of jobs apples and try to make them agree. They don't, and never will.

The Establishment Survey went up 187k in August, but the unemployment rate is not derived from that survey. 

 

 

Welcome to February 2022 CIVPART data at 62.3%, otherwise known as September 1977

 

The 2020 average was revised to 61.8 and the 2021 average is 61.7.

One way to grow the participation rate, as seen in the first chart, which is monthly, is TO NOT HAVE TO COUNT PEOPLE.

How do you do that?

The economy sucks so bad you drop out of the labor force, which instantly shrinks its size. So as jobs recover a little bit the participation rate looks better because more people compared with the smaller underlying base are working again.

 

Not in labor force on an average basis hit an all time high in 2021 of 100.24m, pushed mostly by the 2008 catastrophe for older workers, while growth in the labor force has been anemic to flat because people aren't having enough kids.

People who remember the malaise of the Jimmy Carter era who are still alive today can relate. 

CIVPART hovering on the 63% line was the Trump era's "greatest economy ever", lol.

Click any graph to enlarge.

 

VDARE's Ed Rubenstein tries to put lipstick on foreign born pig, but their population and employment both are up 1.7 million under Trump, their labor force is up 1.4 million: There is no "Trump effect" suppressing The Great Replacement

Here.

OK geezer

Whatever happened to 65 and out? ... Can you name a single institution of American life that’s functioning better today than it was before the boomers took over?

Matthew Hennessey must be like 120 years old to know how things were before the boomers took over.

Someone really should tell this guy full retirement age is 66-67, not 65, for people born in 1943 and later. To get what people used to get at 65, THEY MUST WORK LONGER.

There are 10.347 million 65 and older working in 2019 on average. The 65s were born in 1954. There's 4.07 million right there. They hit full retirement age this year, at 66. But after that it starts stretching out: 66 years 2 months if born in 1955, then 66 years 4 months, and so on until 1960 when full retirement age is 67 years old. And there's over 4 million in each of those years, too. So you think it's bad now, just you wait Henry Higgins, just you wait.

Go ask these people if they wish they could retire already. A majority of them would rather be among the 42 million their age who are no longer in the labor force. And that will become more true with every passing year. Believe me.

Meanwhile 48 million GenXers are employed. They are not being stifled by 10 million who refuse to retire.

Story.

LOL: Donald Trump's crackpot 35% unemployment in February 2016 is 37% today

Jeffrey Snider:

In February of 2016, then-candidate Trump deployed his typical grandiose, exaggerated style after his win in the New Hampshire primary.

“Don't believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5 percent unemployment. The number's probably 28, 29, as high as 35. In fact, I even heard recently 42 percent.

[T]he once fake unemployment rate has become his primary campaign symbol.

Big Fat Idiot Rush Limbaugh 2/5/2016:

We have an audio sound bite here from Obama ... He was heralding first-time unemployment rate as being under 5% for the first time in seven years ... Well, there’s a reason he said it. It’s because it’s the only way you can ignore the 94 million Americans not working, not in the labor force ... This is an abject joke. It’s a total joke.

Millions of older workers aged 55-64 have also been driven out of the labor force in the last 20 years by greedy corporations hungry for cheap, foreign labor, aided and abetted by Bush, Obama and now Trump

Average number aged 55-64 "not in labor force"

1999: 9.382 million

2019: 14.638 million

-------------------------

+5.256 million in the last 20 years

There's plenty of labor available, Mr. Trump.

We don't need your cheap foreign scab labor.

Trump insists to Laura Ingraham that we don't have enough workers even though over 3 million more prime age workers aged 25-54 aren't even in the labor force 20 years on from 1999

Average number "Not in labor force" aged 25-54

1999: 18.785 million

2019: 22.102 million

--------------------------

+3.317 million after 20 years, despite recent declines

The last 20 years have been a disaster for American workers with Bush and Obama outsourcing good middle class jobs to cheaper labor markets around the world, especially China.

Trump was supposed to fix this, and now he's parroting the arguments of the people he ran against.

It's pitiful and awful. 

Watch Ingraham grill Trump here. Unfortunately Laura's command of the data is merely derivative and shallow, which leaves her simply to argue against Trump that he didn't campaign on bringing in foreign labor, which is an excellent political point by itself, but she didn't own the president on this one the way she could have with the facts. She's smart enough to understand that lack of wage pressure refutes the idea of a labor shortage, but didn't dig deeper to find the surplus labor.

Sean Hannity is wrong: Labor force participation for men is still in the toilet

Trump shill Andy Puzder complains of non-existent labor shortage, suggests more legal immigration while 3 million teenagers sit idle

Labor Shortage May Imperil Growth:

[T]he tight labor market is the elephant in the room. ... In July, the most recent month for which we have data, job openings stood at 7.2 million—nearly 1.2 million more than the number of unemployed. ... [A]t some point the economy will need more workers to meet that demand.

That means job training is increasingly important, particularly for discouraged workers who want to re-enter the labor force. ... Higher levels of merit-based legal immigration—as opposed to immigration based on distant family connections—could also relieve some of the pressure.

Both business owners and jobs data tell us the same thing: To sustain the recovery, the U.S. needs more workers.

The real elephant in the room is idle teenagers.

In 1978, 8.1 million American teenagers aged 16-19 had jobs, on average. That was 48.5% of their population of 16.7 million teens at the time.

In 2018 just 5.1 million teenagers worked on average, out of an equally matched population of 16.8 million aged 16-19. That's just 30.4% working.

Apply the 48.5% rate to today's average teen population and presto! 3 million more instantly working than are.

We don't need more immigrants. We need parents to kick their kids' butts, kids who increasingly fail to launch because they are in desperate need of job experience to help them grow up, become responsible and fly straight.

And it would also help to eliminate the minimum wage. What grocery store wants to pay some kid $7.25 an hour to corral shopping carts, restock returns and take out the trash? And adjusted for inflation from 1938, the minimum wage in 2018 should be closer to $4.45 an hour anyway, nearly 39% less than it is.

The higher than it should be minimum wage is a tax on teenage employment. And as with all taxes, the more you tax something the less of that something you get. That's one reason high levels of illegal immigration remain so persistent. It's a natural response to an unnatural situation created by hypocritical politicians who claim to believe in the free market but don't really.

And it's nothing new. We just hoped Trump & Co. would be different. 

       

Not in labor force averaged a RECORD 95.86 million in the first half of 2019

Rush Limbaugh's favorite group to mock every month under Obama as "all eating but not working".

Now you never hear about them.

The biggest fraud and grifter ever to hit the big time, right behind Trump.

There is no jobs boom but you'd never know it from the headlines

Are all these stories written by twenty-somethings? They are an offense to anyone with a knowledge of history:

"US adds robust 224,000 jobs in June" -- ABC

"Strong hiring in June: 224,000 new jobs, 3.7% unemployment" -- CBS

"Big month for jobs, big headache for Fed Chair Powell" -- NBC

"U.S. adds 224,000 jobs as hiring rebounds in June, calming worries about the economy" -- MarketWatch

"US labour market booms in June" -- BBC

"The US labor market rebounds in June, adding far more jobs than expected" -- Business Insider

"Jobs report smashes expectations" -- AOL 

"Labor market comes roaring back as jobs see 'nice pop', economists say" -- MarketWatch

Meanwhile, the facts.

Trump has yet to put numbers on the board which distinguish payrolls as robust, strong, big, calming, booming, rebounding, smashing or roaring.

For roaring you have to look back to Reagan and Clinton. Trump is not in their league. So far he's not even as good as Obama for putting up big months (granted, over eight years), and is merely one term president Bush 41-league, the best comparison for comparable time in office. It ain't over 'til it's over, but 30 months in Trump has just two big months to his name, that's it, and the clock is ticking on the longest, but nowhere near best, economic expansion in history.

On a net population-adjusted basis there are as of 2018 5.2 million more Americans 16 to 64 years of age not in the labor force who used to be in it since low levels reached for respective age groups in 1989, 1995 and 1997, including one million fewer not in labor force age 25-54 since 1989. There are 2.8 million more 16-24 not in labor force in 2018 than in 1995 on a population adjusted basis, and 3.4 million more age 55-64 since 1997.

5.2 million people actually sitting on the sidelines added to payrolls in a real jobs boom would boost current monthly levels by 108,333 on an average basis over 4 years, in other words, well above 300,000 monthly.

Trump gave 2.3 million foreigners US jobs in fiscal 2017 and 1.8 million in 2018 while 22.7 million able-bodied Americans 25-54 weren't even in the labor force in 2018

2018 USCIS Statistical Annual Report

Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey

April 2019: 882K dropped out of labor force, labor force contracted 726K, employment level contracted 103K, participation rate fell to 62.8% (the 2016 average), average weekly hours so far in 2019 down 0.4 from 2018 average

Data.

Data.

Data.

Data.

Data.

But other than that it's an economic boom because total nonfarm is up 263K.

Ann Coulter shows her hubris here, opining about unemployment which she understands little better than Rush Limbaugh

Yes, there was an effort in 2010 and 2011 to track Americans unemployed "260 weeks or longer", but that is irrelevant to the unemployment rate, which has declined so much because so many are no longer counted in the labor force, that's all. That would include the long term "unemployed", who aren't really unemployed because those people get kicked out of the labor force according to the definitions used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

You may not like that. You may not agree with that. But that's what happens. If you haven't looked for work in 4 weeks but have in the last year, you'll still be in the labor force, but after a year you are out if you've given up looking. And presto, when millions can't find work in this shrunken economy, they drop out by not looking any longer, so the labor force shrinks, and thus fewer people get counted as unemployed. It's as simple as that.

A better way to look at it is, How many people have full time jobs?

Since 1968 the average percent of the civilian noninstitutional population employed full time at peaks has been 51.2%. At troughs it has been 48.6%. In February 2019 49.9% had full time jobs.

At 51.2% in February 2019 instead of at 49.9%, however, we'd have about 3.46 million more working full time than we actually have.

That's what is wrong with the Trump economy inherited from Obama.

There remains no economic driver for a jobs boom.

Ann is still right, however. Why on earth would you import more people to America in a situation of labor slack like this?

It's insane, and perverse. It does active harm to people already here who can't find full time work.

Unfortunately, Donald Trump hasn't got a clue about this.

Like I said, we are well and truly screwed.

Rush Limbaugh doesn't know what he's talking about when he says there are more job openings than workers

Total nonfarm job openings: 7,581,000

A: Unemployment level: 6,235,000

B: Not in labor force want a job now: 5,222,000

C: Not in labor force age 25-54: 22,015,000

A is the official unemployment level. To be counted in it you have to be counted in the labor force.

B is the number of people in addition to the unemployed who are unemployed but aren't counted as such because they are not in the labor force. These are the people unemployed longer than one year who say they still want a job when they are surveyed.

C is all the people of prime working age who aren't in the labor force and aren't counted as unemployed. Some of B are included in this number. This group averaged 21.3 million in both 2006 and 2007, before the shit hit the fan, and got as high as almost 24 million in 2015. It averaged 22.7 million last year. The data goes back only to 1982 but shows that in the 1980s and some of the 1990s that this group shrank during jobs recoveries just as it is shrinking now. There is lots of potential labor here sitting on the sidelines.

In any event, A + B means at least 11.5 million jobless with 7.6 million openings.

Advantage: employers.

P. S. I have seen the very same jobs with the very same companies advertized for years on end. How do they never get filled, hm?

Using the historical average of labor participation, 2.3 million more people age 16-24 should have been in the labor force in 2018 than were

The civilian labor force level of people age 16-24 averaged almost 21 million in 2018, 55.2% of the civilian noninstitutional population age 16-24 averaging 38 million. Upping the participation rate simply to the average of 61.2% for all the years shown in the graph below would have raised their labor force level to 23.3 million, 2.3 million higher than actual. 

Too bad for them, the low paying jobs they need to get work experience and a leg up on life are being taken by immigrants imported by the millions by the two political parties.

The ones we don't kill in the womb we torture in other ways.

I 100% sympathize with this technically true observation, but at least 17 million of these 54 million not in labor force are in high school and college!

It would be SO much better for high schoolers and collegians if there were ZERO illegal and legal immigrants taking the jobs they need to finance their educations, but when I think labor force, I don't think people 16-24 even though they contribute a lot to the economy.

Go to school. Stay in school. Then work like hell, SAVE, INVEST, and enjoy the American dream while voting for immigration restrictionists.

People 55-64 forced out of the labor force since 2000 is up 49.5%, more than any other age demo

In 2018 over 37 million people age 25-64 were not in the labor force.

Not only did they have no jobs, they were not even counted as unemployed because they were not counted as part of the labor force either.

They literally do not count.

Here are the average millions in 2018 by age tranche who are not in the labor force:

25-34:   7.81 million

35-44:   6.95 million

45-54:   7.93 million

55-64: 14.76 million

65+:     41.25 million.

Approximately 32.2 million of these people do not yet qualify for Social Security, including 9.5 million of whom are 55-61.

And if you want to know why young people are living in their parents' basements in their 20s, you have your answer: Business has not hired the young and inexperienced and has fired the old and higher paid.

Nothing personal, right? Just business.

Effing libertarians.

MLK Jr Day 2019: Record 12.6 million blacks not in labor force