Welcome back, Carter: Labor Force Participation Rate Drops to 1979 Levels; Real Unemployment at 11.6 percent

Oh, Madge, he's so historic!

Things just keep getting worse for the American worker, and by implication [the] U.S. economy, where as we have shown many times before, it pays just as well to sit back and collect disability and various welfare and entitlement checks, than to work. The best manifestation of this: the number of people not in the labor force, which in March soared by a massive 663,000 to a record 90 million Americans who are no longer even looking for work. This was the biggest monthly increase in people dropping out of the labor force since January 2012, when the BLS did its census recast of the labor numbers.

But the "official" unemployment number dropped, don'tcha know?

Today, we got the laughable news that the unemployment rate declined even as those not in the labor force ... declined by 496,000. Which is precisely the issue: fudging the labor force participation rate is how the Obama administration has managed to maintain the myth the economy has grown under his leadership for the past 4+ years. It hasn't, and in fact if one re-normalizes for the recent long-term average participation rate of 65.8%, one gets a very different number. How different? A difference that is now at a record compared to what is reported.

...what the real unemployment rate is assuming normal growth of the labor force, which in March was 11.6%, up from 11.3% in February, and the highest since August 2012 when it was 11.7%.

This month the labor force participation rate plunged from an already horrific 63.5% to 63.3%, which is the lowest since 1979.

The fact that the headline unemployment number "dropped" at the same time is indicative of pure propaganda. Something that Pravda would publish during the days of the old Soviet Union.

It's truly sad what this federal government and its media apparatus has become.


Chart: St. Louis Fed.