People Not In Labor Force Soar By 522,000, Labor Force Participation Rate Lowest Since 1981

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it is just getting sad now. In April the number of people not in the labor force rose by a whopping 522,000 from 87,897,000 to
88,419,000. This is the highest on record. The flip side, and the reason why the unemployment dropped to 8.1% is that the labor force participation rate just dipped to a new 30 year low of 64.3%.

Labor force participation Rate:

People not in labor force:

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Let’s hear Romney’s plan to deal with this problem—in specifics, not just in broad, ideological terms.

These are NOT the older all retiring, either.
Many baby boomers are getting out a bit early IF they can get disability to kick in.
But the best employment per age group is the ”over 50” age group.
So, this represents younger people giving up.
I haven’t heard this term since Obama’s second year but they actually used to call it ”funemployment.”
After all, Obama extended payments from 26 weeks out to just under a year, 50 weeks.

After all, Obama extended payments from 26 weeks out to just under a year, 50 weeks.

And republicans wouldn’t have.

@Liberal1 (objectivity), #1:

Romney has no specifics. What he has is an ideological check list, adjusted according to where he’s speaking and what audience he’s in front of.

@Greg:

Have you EVER heard obama greg? Wow. You MUST be getting paid by the post to lie, project, and spread far left propaganda.

Specifics huh? You mean like Hope and Change? Hypocrites.

The main thing is now Obama can take credit for lowering the unemployment rate by another .1% point. As for the 500,000 plus who dropped out of the labor force, who cares? They are collateral damage. If the lower unemployment rate helps to get him re-elected, the end will justify the means. Remember the teachings of those who mentored him.

@Hard Right: Greg (aka: BOHICAman) and Liberal1 (aka: BOHICAman2) must be covert operatives from the White House sub-basement group; you know, the ones that person-up the tattle-tale team (TTT).

@another vet: Unfortunately, he has just suborned their allegiance to the dark side of minimal (hand-to-mouth) gummint subsistence. Grinding poverty to buy votes.

The labor force participation rate chart covers a period of 30 years. As of January 2011, the percentage of the total population that’s employed was pretty much the same as it was in January 1980. The peak rate is only about 3.5 points higher than the 1980 and 2011 levels. Does a 3.5 percent rise and drop over a period of 30 years signify some sort of labor force cataclysm?

If you really want to dwell on the decline, note that the greatest portion of it took place between January 2001 and January 2009. Find those two points on the chart, get a ruler, and see for yourself. Just for fun, you might also want to determine when the 12 continuous years of republican Congressional majorities fits in–6 of which overlapped the years of the Bush administration. Extra points will be given for doing the same with the years of the Bush tax cuts.

@Marine72: The old horse and carrot routine. They already ruined the blacks by showing them the way of welfare is preferable to jobs. Next it will be the Hispanics. They will start with the young whites by forgiving their student loans which will teach them that they don’t have to pay for their expenditures. Eventually a permanent majority will be had. In the process, everyone will have forgotten how to work and we will become a lethargic society incapable of taking care of itself.

@Liberal1 (objectivity): Let’s hear 0-bama’s sense everything he had done has failed. Liberal wachos blame everyone but the one responsible which is their black messiah 0-bama.

As bad as that many years ago!
And some people think it isn’t Obama’s fault?
Here’s a special graph for them:
http://www.westernfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Image1-570×448.jpg

In this chart, people are counted as either working or not-working.
It doesn’t matter whether they’re looking for work or not.
That makes it harder to “fudge” than the widely reported “unemployment rate”charts.
Note the steady, linear decline in the trend lines since Obama took office in January, 2009.

Un-retouched is here:
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

@Marine72:

Another example of the government pissing away money on ultra-lousy investments.

How many more Americans would currently be unemployed if republicans had their way with the auto industry bailout? There would be no GM and all of the support industry jobs would be gone, too.

What if there had been no stimulus spending? No unemployment extensions? How many small businesses across America would have gone under, had those funds not been injected into state and local economies?

Greg, stop pretending the left cares about people or jobs.
Walker in WI is a prime example of the truth. He got them out of debt AND saved a number of jobs the left wanted to toss to the wolves. He even saved union jobs all while cutting the tax burden on the middle class.
How does the left react? They try to kick him out of office. Again, proof they are just a type of liberal fascist.
GM would not have wasted BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars if the course of nature had been allowed to happen. All your socialist god has done is delay the inevitible while trampling the rights of shareholders. Of course you don’t care about rights when it comes to forcing your narcissistic and hate filled ideology on others. All you care about is pumping up your ego.

@Greg:

How many more Americans would currently be unemployed if republicans had their way with the auto industry bailout? There would be no GM and all of the support industry jobs would be gone, too.

Yep, cause only the government can save a company that has gotten itself in a bind. Remember when the government saved Delta? No? That’s because Delta filed for bankruptcy and worked its way out of it. What about Pacific Gas & Electric. Remember when the government bailed them out? Yeah, the government didn’t. They filed bankruptcy in 2001 and now that they have worked their way out of it, they are on the Fortune 500 list.
The free market does not need the government Greg. They need to know what the rules are, that the rules are going to remain stable, and then be left alone. GM could have filed for bankruptcy and would have either emerged or been absorbed. That is the way of the free market.

@Greg:
I disagree. The auto industry is made up of the surviving bits and pieces of dead companies. I’m more familiar with Chrysler than GM… but Chrysler was formed by merging Chrysler with Dodge and later with AMC – to get the Jeep brand, itself rescued from Willys. If GM and Chrysler had died, the viable parts would have been fused into the survivors.