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August Jobs Report: 94 Million Americans No Longer in Labor Force

August Jobs Report: 94 Million Americans No Longer in Labor Force

In a nation of 300 million…

Democrats are probably very happy with the August jobs report and the new unemployment rate of 5.1, but if you look closely at the issue, there’s no reason for turning cartwheels just yet.

Susan Jones of CNS News:

Record 94,031,000 Americans Not in Labor Force; Participation Rate Stuck at 38-Year Low for 3rd Straight Month

A record 94,031,000 Americans were not in the American labor force last month — 261,000 more than July — and the labor force participation rate stayed stuck at 62.6 percent, a 38-year low, for a third straight month in August, the Labor Department reported on Friday, as the nation heads into the Labor Day weekend.

The number of Americans not in the labor force has continued to rise, partly because of retiring baby-boomers and fewer workers entering the workforce.

In August, according to BLS, the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population, consisting of all people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, reached 251,096,000. Of those, 157,065,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job or actively seeking one.

The 157,065,000 who participated in the labor force equaled only 62.6 percent of the 251,096,000 civilian noninstitutional population — the same as it was in July and June. Not since October 1977, when the participation rate dropped to 62.4, has the percentage been this low.

Stuart Varney of the FOX Business Network put it all in perspective yesterday. The low participation rate is what’s actually driving down the unemployment rate:

Zero Hedge has more (emphasis is theirs):

Record 94 Million Americans Not In The Labor Force; Participation Rate Lowest Since 1977

While the kneejerk headling scanning algos are focusing on the seasonally-adjusted headline monthly NFP increase which came in a worse than expected 173K, the presidential candidates – especially the GOP – are far more focused on another data point: the labor force participation rate, and the number of Americans not in the labor force.

Here, they will have some serious ammo, because according to the BLS, the main reason why the unemployment rate tumbled to the lowest since April 2008 is because another 261,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force, as a result pushing the total number of US potential workers who are not in the labor force, to a record 94 million, an increase of 1.8 million in the past year, and a whopping 14.9 million since the start of the second great depression in December 2007 while only 4 million new jobs have been created.

Hooray?

Featured image via FOX News video.

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Comments

Let’s start a movement to have those 94 million jobless Americans flood into Mexico where they will find a much cheaper cost of living while they demand welfare, education, health, and other services from the Mexican government.

    Ragspierre in reply to LukeHandCool. | September 5, 2015 at 12:56 pm

    Yeah, no. That would be VERY hard on Americans, who would have to compete with little kids selling Chiclets on the street corners, since Mexico doesn’t have much of a welfare system.

    Plus, their immigration laws are really HARSH!

      AZ_Langer in reply to Ragspierre. | September 5, 2015 at 1:07 pm

      Mexico actually has a better welfare program than you suggest, Rags. They encourage their poor to come let US take care of them.

I’m shaking my fist at those lazy kids mooching off their parents and those old forgeys collecting Social Security. Leeches the lot of them.

    snopercod in reply to Mike N.. | September 5, 2015 at 1:26 pm

    As one of those “leeches” who paid into Social Security for probably twice as many years as you’ve been alive, I have only one thing to say: “Bite Me”.

DINORightMarie | September 5, 2015 at 1:56 pm

I was reading a report and the 94,000,000 don’t count those who are “active in the work force.”

That means that the people currently unemployed but who are LOOKING for work are NOT counted in this number……

So, it’s actually WORSE than this……. Scary. Very scary.

    Not A Member of Any Organized Political in reply to DINORightMarie. | September 5, 2015 at 2:24 pm

    So that would make the real unemployment rate…what…40%?

    “Greatest Depression Evah!” – Obama and the Dems.

    nordic_prince in reply to DINORightMarie. | September 5, 2015 at 4:42 pm

    Add to that all of us who are “employed” but working 2+ part-time jobs because we can’t find full-time employment, and the picture gets even worse. Granted, it’s better than nothing, but there are hidden costs to cobbling together various part-time jobs in hopes of coming up with something resembling a full-time income: scheduling nightmares, severe restrictions as to hours (can’t be scheduled for more hours if it’ll put you too close to the Obamacare limit), no home life to speak of since you’re always hustling to make ends meet, no paid vacation, sick days, or other benefits that others take for granted ~

    jayjerome66 in reply to DINORightMarie. | September 5, 2015 at 5:41 pm

    Who is not in the labor force?

    From:
    http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#nilf

    “As mentioned previously, the labor force is made up of the employed and the unemployed. The remainder—those who have no job and are not looking for one—are counted as not in the labor force. Many who are not in the labor force are going to school or are retired. Family responsibilities keep others out of the labor force. Since the mid-1990s, typically fewer than 1 in 10 people not in the labor force reported that they want a job.”

    From Factcheck:
    http://www.factcheck.org/2015/03/declining-labor-participation-rates/

    The decline in labor participation started before Obama was in office:

    “Among the reasons cited for the trend:
    1) The aging of baby boomers. A lower percentage of older Americans choose to work than those who are middle-aged. And so as baby boomers approach retirement age, it lowers the labor force participation rate.
    2) A decline in working women. The labor force participation rate for men has been declining since the 1950s. But for a couple decades, a rapid rise in working women more than offset that dip. Women’s labor force participation exploded from nearly 34 percent in 1950 to its peak of 60 percent in 1999. But since then, women’s participation rate has been “displaying a pattern of slow decline.”
    3) More young people are going to college. As BLS noted, “Because students are less likely to participate in the labor force, increases in school attendance at the secondary and college levels and, especially, increases in school attendance during the summer, significantly reduce the labor force participation rate of youths.”
    So no matter who was president, and independent of the health of the economy, BLS projected in 2006 that labor force participation rates were going to go down.
    But it’s also true that the decline has been even steeper than projected. For example, in that 2006 report, BLS projected the participation rate would decline to 64.5 percent in 2020. It’s already 1.7 percentage points below that in 2015.”

      Eastwood Ravine in reply to jayjerome66. | September 5, 2015 at 8:22 pm

      That’s hilarious. You realize if Republicans defended a low participation rate under a Republican president you would be the first to shred that defense.

      You’re a troll. Obama has put the U.S. into the worse economy since Jimmy Carter.

    DuraMater in reply to DINORightMarie. | September 5, 2015 at 7:03 pm

    Yep. And of those 173,000 “jobs added”, I want to know how many went to Americans vs how many were filled by foreign born?

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Eastwood Ravine | September 5, 2015 at 2:43 pm

I knew the participation rate is bad, but when we’re at a point where nearly one-third of Americans aren’t working, that’s “really, really bad” – to sound like Trump?

Speaking of Trump, AP is reporting that he is beating Hillary in a head-to-head matchup. If those numbers hold, Hillary is not going to be the Democrats nominee.

The Progressive “good news” is bad news for American investors! Puerto Rico’s economic problems will immigrate stateside with the help of HRC.

Clintonomics: tax hikes or broken promises; “fair share” tax penalties for the top earners.

Yet, it is the top earners who invest their money to create jobs, jobs that government could never create except for… the bureaucratic porno-watching jobs or the lying Lois Lerner type jobs or the guy who sets up covert server jobs or the fill-in-the blank politically partisan job, etc. etc. etc….

More Varney & Co.:

“Clinton vows to raise taxes, reform Wall Street in effort to recapture progressive base.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/13/clinton-economic-address/

And there’s, sHillary’s Six –Year sliding scale with ST capital gains taxed economic atrophy policy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE5Tyrf2o2s

Moronic!

The quality of jobs is also a big issue. Low end employed still get welfare and Medicaid. And those 30 million illegals are also part of the count (though accurate numbers are difficult).

http://www.cis.org/employment-rights

As long as the leveraged monetary system holds together, and the bubbled stock and bond markets hold on, we can keep “kicking the can” as they say.

But that can kicking is how bad politicians keep getting elected, rather than being forced to reckon with the real problems. Hopefully at the end of the road, we still have some semblance of order, and still a republic.

Obama kept delaying the Obamacare results so bad policy could be entrenched, before the pain kicked in. Our economy, welfare state, public union graft, bad trade deals, open borders, etc. have been delaying the pain for ten or twenty years, at least. Obama is just kicking it up a few notches. BAM!