Hi doma,
"headline figures are their to sell to the sheeple."
Do you think so?
Okay, so here's what the report actually said.
"After accounting for the annual adjustments to the population controls, the employment-population ratio (58.5 percent) rose in January, while the civilian labor force participation rate held at 63.7 percent."
www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Why do you think the labor participation only held at 63.7 percent?
Well. It's because the number of people who aren't in the civilian labor force is increasing. People who aren't in the civilian labor force? That is, people who are over the age of 16 and yet who are excluded from the calculation of the working population. Have a guess who these people mostly are? I'll give you a clue. They are old.
Okay. So what excites the folks who are NOT the sheeple in your book? They are excited by the fact that the population of elderly people is increasing. A whole bunch of them retire at the end of the year, which is why the numbers jump. So relatively-speaking, the number of people in work relative to the total population over aged 16 "held at 63.7%".
That's an interesting statistic, I guess. Old people are living longer. So there are fewer people to support them, relatively-speaking. Perhaps this argues that the government should raise the retirement age. Okay. January confirmed this long-term trend.
But is this really what absorbs the illuminati?
What do the sheeple get excited about? In their simplicity:
They are excited because the number of unemployed people has reduced from 13.9m in January 2011 to 12.8m in January 2012. That's a drop of 1.1m. Put another way, the economy leaves 8.3% of working people unemployed at the beginning of this year, whereas that number was 9.1% a year ago in January 2011.
They are excited by the fact that the number of employed people has increased from 139.3m in January 2011 to 141.6m now. That's an increase of 2.3m.
Why the difference between the change in the number of unemployed and the change in the number of employed people? - well, the civilian labour force (the number of employed people plus the number of unemployed people) is also increasing. Just not as fast as the number of retirees. So an increase in the number of jobs by 2.3m in a year only lowers unemployment by 1.1m. Still, even 1.1m is a positive.
Good news? Of course it is.
Is the recovery complete? Of course not. Obama inherited a catastrophe. It's hard work getting back to something more normal.
The trend is our friend, however. It's always nice to see that things are improving.
At any rate, I'm glad to see you trust the figures sufficiently to rely upon them to construct your argument.
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