As the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced a fall in the unemployment rate from 9.0 to 8.6 percent, it noted that a contraction of the labor force accounted for more than half (emphasis added) the reduction in the number of unemployed.This "contraction in the labor force" is 315,000 people giving up looking for work. Wanna guess whether the White House will mention this contraction?
A concise William Galston article in The New Republic is my source. Galston tells us the working age population has grown but the labor force has not.
We'd need another ten million jobs to reach what is considered full employment. Hat tip to RealClearPolitics for the link.
