Grasping at Employment Straws

Despite MSM cheer leading, "last Friday's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Employment Situation report," writes Louis Woodhill at RealClearMarkets, "was actually terrible."

BLS uses Payroll Employment numbers to conclude there was an increase of 200,000 jobs from Nov to Dec 2011. But, notes the author, BLS's Household Survey—"which is a more accurate picture of labor market conditions"— shows:

• the civilian labor force fell by 50,000 in December, following a 120,000 decline in November
• for all of 2011, the labor force rose only by 274,000
• during the first 3 years of Obama's presidency, the labor force fell by 0.7 million overall.

"December marked the 30th month of Obama's economic recovery. During this time, the reported unemployment rate fell from 9.5 percent to 8.5 percent. However, this 'improvement' was entirely an artifact of workers giving up and dropping out of the labor force. In fact, if labor force participation had remained constant at the 67.5 percent level that obtained at the end of the recession (June 2009), December's unemployment rate would have been reported at 10.9 percent."

Read the entire article here.