Is the economy having fun yet?
You wouldn’t know it from recent unemployment reports. Only by using the most ridiculous accounting gimmicks can it be claimed that joblessness actually fell in April, for instance.
Officially, the rate ticked down from a high 8.2 percent to a high 8.1 percent, and 115,000 jobs were created.
But those gains were more than offset by the numbers of Americans who simply gave up looking for work and dropped out of the workforce altogether last month. Because they are not actively seeking employment, they are no longer counted in the unemployment rate. The labor market participation rate fell in April to a three-decade low — only 63.6 percent — as about 342,000 Americans left the workforce. That is not, in fairness, exclusively a result of people giving up the job search. Baby boomer retirements make up part of that. But people ending their job hunts are a significant part of the picture.
Reuters news service put it mildly: “Even a slight drop in the unemployment rate to 8.1 percent had a dark tone because the fall was due entirely to people dropping out of the workforce,” it reported.