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One Million People Dropped Out Of Labor Force In April: Participation Rate Plummets To Lowest Since 1978
And so the BLS is back to its old data fudging, because while the Establishment Survey job number was a whopper, and the biggest monthly addition since January 2012, the Household Survey showed an actual decline of 73K jobs. What is much worse, is that the reason the unemployment rate tumbled is well-known: it was entirely due to the number of Americans dropping out of the labor force. To wit, the labor force participation rate crashed from 63.2% to 62.8%, trying for lowest since January 1978! And why did it crash so much - because the number of people not in the labor force soared to 92 million, the second highest monthly increase ever, or 988K, only 'better' than January 2012 which curiously was the one month when the establishment survey reported a 360K "increase" in jobs.
End result: the number out of the labor force is now an all time high 92 million, and the labor force tumbled by 800K to 155.4 million from 156.2 million as the delayed effect of the extended jobless benefits ending finally hits. What is most amusing is that the "persons who currently want a job" was unchanged at 6,146K - even the BLS said it was "puzzled why so many unemployed people are not looking for jobs." We have some ideas, and no, they don't include the addition of 234K "birth/death adjustment" jobs.
Participation Rate:
People not in the labor force:
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Did they put the kids in daycare?
Didn't think so -
Are you smart enough to understand why she didn't?
Don't think so.
Why didn't grandma go get a job and just put the kids in daycare?
You think she could have made enough at a job to pay for someone else to raise the kids?
Does this "employment problem" date back to your grandparents?
Think grandma could have raised 14 kids on her own without any help?
You are a fool.
but don't see it as an employment problem.
Yes. It is a cultural problem. The disintegration of the family and out of wedlock birthrate are the causes.
Until we fix the culture then our path is set. We can only fix the culture by getting involved and developing relationships with each other.
Satan is high-fiving!
sschu
Increase in single parenting is an issue, but not THE issue. Once upon a time a single average income could support a family. Now not so much. First thing I thought when I saw the chart and the dates was that the start pretty well coincides with women starting to enter the workforce in large numbers. Sure, maybe some of it was about personal fullfillment, but a lot was inflation/flat wages and then the huge increase in divorces.
The unpaid work of keeping a home, buying and preparing food, and raising children isn't valued like paid employment. Nevermind what it would cost a family to pay others for all those services. I don't know how, or if, that gets fixed.
Married with one child here. I did try to keep working for a year or so, found that childcare, work expenses, and tax consequences made it not very remunerative.
Now our child is school age and my spouse is pushing for me to work, but I don't think it would be as great as he thinks. If I work part time chances are he will have to do some after work childcare and I will be gone a lot on nights and weekends. If I work full time then there is child care expense for before/after school and summers ($$$), plus all the housework, errands, appointments and crap would need to be done on weekends and he likes to kick back and do fun stuff on the weekend. Honestly I think he is jealous of the freedom I have. I would offer to switch, but his income potential is near double mine, and if he actually had my job I think he would hate it...dishes, bathrooms, etc.
Suggest you read "What is Wrong with California" by Cashill and anything by Charles Murray. The cultural cost of the collapse of the family and out of wedlock birthrates are staggering.
Unfortunately you will not read about this stuff in the NY Times or see it on CNN.
Cultural collapse leads to economic collapse. We are somewhere in the middle and heading the wrong way. This is what it is as much as we would like to deny the truth.
sschu
I tend to think the two feed on each other. Ideally a child has three adults to depend on for support.
Women didn't have a lot of choices. Pre '60s there was a lack of dependable birth control and pre '70s not many employment opportunities for women. When women could earn an income to support themselves there was a wave of divorces in the '80s.
Now fewer people are bothering to get married. IMO it is kind of funny that gays are pushing into marriage at the same time straights are giving it a pass in large numbers. Men are losing ground in education and employment. Women are pulling ahead in educational achievement, but not so much in wages/upper level positions.
So besides the people who don't want to marry/have kids out of wedlock, you also have the more traditional marrying types delaying, reducing, or foregoing having kids due to the financial crunch. We have one child, and know another couple with one, two with two kids, and lots with no kids by choice.
Seems like best case is going back to multi generational living, and with the decrease in marriage and increase in female breadwinners I could see an increase in matriarchy, i.e. grandmother, daughters, grandchildren in one house. The guys get kicked out to live single with room mates until marrying in to a new family.
ETA: remember a couple more new acquaintances with 2 kids each. Can't think of any with 3. 4 will get stares now out in public as people think you are either dumb, crazy, rich, or some combination of the 3.
Failure of the intact family unit dooms the culture to failure. All the government handouts and virtually unlimited free money from the Fed will not overcome these trends.
Only a revival of Biblical nature can save America. Without repentance, our fate is sealed.
Stay at home and be a mother to your kid(s). It is an investment that will return far more than finding a job.
sschu
Two people working together - having kids - raising a family - shared joy & pain - is what some consider being blessed.
If you consider it unpaid work then I feel sorry for you.
God you're a bunch of cynics on here. Everything is clearly back on the up...... er, would you like a pint of what I've just been drinking :-%
Thats some good shit u b drinkin
When your lying on your back, everything is 'up'
If only it were 1,000,005 people that left the labor force...including the FED Board of Governors
By the mid-term elections the unemployment rate will be below 6% count on it. It's a total scam but the masses beleive and they will vote to keep their masters in place.
Thats ok, our masters in DC are about to develop a new security force, just as powerful, just as well equipped as all of the DoD - and this security force, comprised of the unemployed and "work force non-participants" - will put their boot on the neck of what is left of the US. America will allow this in the name of security - and the unemployed will leapfrog all of their employed peers as they bust 100 strong into our houses/apartments/shantys and haul our asses off - or haul our carcasses out.
so they will go from being fired to being fired upon.....
That is 1 million new recruits to take on the Russian Bear.
Genuine suferring increasing in the US and the govt bullshiting everybody telling its all better now... and of course those who cant get job because there are none...will be further victimised by all.
EXCELLENT !!
83% (at least) of this 288K job increase was 'B/D adjustment', so they're actually counting 1 month old infants as new hired employees debt slaves.
These lunatics spewing this BS data should be taken out back and shot.
Birth/death adjustment refers to the beginnings and ends of employers, not human beings.
Lol, of course, this little inconvenient piece of data will be ignored by the media. Here's what's been undone.. remember how there was that whole thing in the 70s of getting more women into the workplace? It's effectively been negated now.
Dont know why the MSM still want to lie about unemployment...I mean it must be obvious to all that the government is lying through its teeth...
Sheep dont care and never will, the rest of us do but nothing will get done either....cant beat um' join um'.
That clearly can't be a serious question. The MSM saves the tough questions for the media's political opponents. Duh
There has always been a huge population of state, local and federal government employees that retire early. The early retirement baby boomers are a monster group and account for a lot of this number. Good luck getting on a golf course... Oh, that's right... you still have to work you pos tax donkey private sector fodder!!!
I believe substantial change has occurred regarding permanent disability claims approved. With permanent disability, Americans drop from the workforce as retired with early social security benefits. Could this be why they aren't looking for work, or perhaps its because of the more lucrative benefits some states and the federal government has been offering the poor. The Feds have actually spent taxpayer money on encouraging people that might not otherwise have applied, to sign up and get their entittlements. Clearly, they want more growth in this program. What with that, why should they be pryed from the sofa?
I'm betting they realize what many don't seem to, that there IS no "employment solution" for a large number of people. If you don't employ, you MUST support, and jobs are being lost overall. It's musical chairs, with someone removing chairs at a faster and faster pace as more people enter the circling horde.
What you see as government encouraging dependency, and lazy people on their sofas, may in fact be government's desperate attempts to prevent the REAL effects of their policies, and the real state of the economy, from becoming too obvious. And because the numbers frighten them and they can see where this is headed, they prefer to try and 'oil the waters' by getting more people under some kind of safety-net program so they don't end up rioting. They're no happier about supporting these folks as you are, but they know how many there are, and what a danger they pose. (This is what I remind my conservative friends of when they talk about throwing the bums off welfare...I don't care WHAT your Congressman says he'll do about welfare and entitlement programs, those "bums" will ALWAYS be supported by the taxpayers. Because your Congressman may be stupid, but he's not THAT stupid. HE grasps the implications of those numbers, even if you do not.)
That was quick. I was betting the rebuttle post was going up at least 2pm.
Why did i drop out of the labor force…I no longer support a mafia run monetary system!
So when voting does not really don't matter, when you only you have evil and extra evil to vote for..what do you do?
We the people Withhold the real gold from the system....our sweat, blood and tears they will have no more!
I saved my money from my labors, closed out my stocks and IRA account. I am done of supporting crooks and so are many others…bought land to live off, minimized my life from things to having fiends and family to being most important in my life. I have turned the land into self sustaining, not just for me, but anyone with the same mindset (and there is a lot of us)….we farm and sale\barter what we produce on the land to people.
I have one guy making cat hotels, and another working on cars, all for cash or trade\some of the woman are making gloves and hats...there are other ways to live besides working for the white man and being taxed of labor and taxed or our income...
You want to change the world for a better place?…change your mindset.
working for someone, and paying a ridiculous amount of tax to state and gov is so yesterday.
Tax money is used to oppress the people and taking resource from others and imposing laws that take more rights away...why pay into that system, when it is the root of evil on the planet?
I kind of don't get it.
Will someone please explain Labor Force Participation in a few simple sentences?
Is another way of saying this that if you are not laboring to support yourself then you are supporting yourself via someone else's labor? Just because you are not in the labor force anymore doesnt mean you still don't need to labor. What then do these people do?
If the labor participation rate is going down, then what inverse number is going up? Government handout numbers like welfare, disabilty, unemployment claims?
Thats a rhetorical question... Right?
Handouts. Yes, folks are getting handouts ... from governments, churches, charity, family members, whoever they can. Many working off-the-books, sometimes for $5 an hour, or just for a meal and a night on a couch. 12-step meetings and storefront church events are full. I've been hearing gunshots in the woods. I see people scrounging for cans and bottles to return for the deposit every day. In the inner city I can't walk down a street without being asked for a dollar, sometimes by a man or woman I knew in happier times, not too proud now to put their relationship with me at stake.
But I don't really know. The numbers I'm seeing don't seem to add up to the number that have dropped off the radar. Unemployed folk are withdrawing into their homes. Many, with cable and internet service shut off and no analog signal their old TV can pick up, may be taking up the old national passtime of actually talking to each other. Or even reading books.
I hope so.
Who wants to work with creeky knees, fallen teeth, shaky bodies when our health care is assured. But ZH is running out of sky is falling fodder that sucks in the naive and the fearful who proivde the bulk of clicks bait for the site.
288k new jobs, 1000k dropped out of labor force. Halleluja, let's celebrate this great recovery. /sarc
ps. Work is so sixties-style groovy and outdated. / sarc again, i'm affraid
Those million that dropped out are part of the future hoards of zombies we'll have to face in the near future when the free stuff runs out.
Step 1. Dehumanize the Enemy
Step 2. Kill Them
Obama has failed
The worst President ever
Jimmy Carter smiles!
epic haiku
The BLS is "puzzled why so many unemployed people are not looking for jobs"
Pehaps the BLS would not be so puzzled if they stopped believing their own BS; namely, if unemployed people were looking for jobs, the BLS would have to count those people as actually being unemployed!!!
Doesn't it just warm your heart that so many people are no longer shackled by the inconvenience of having a job and can now depend on someone else...us...to support them? Ya'll best buckle down and get back to work now, ya hear....people are depending on you! Hell, I am thinking about joining them!
They must have all voluntarily left the labor market.
Because they don't need to work anymore.
They're all Wall Street speculators now!
HAHAHA!!!
Once upon a time, lying was considered rude behavior.
Normal practice now, so don't expect anyone to be honest with you anymore.
Frank Sinatra singing about Fairy Tales -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZlut387wh0
Barak Hussein is a HUGE fan of fairy tails.......
'78 was an inflationary period. WTF is tday? Stagflation? If all the lame price supports/manipulations were stripped away...............
Dude, that was like a few days ago!
The 1 million people just retired!
You racists here cannot stand Obama because he's black, so you lie and lie and lie.....You stupid Republicans don't even realize that we are on our FIFTH recovery summer in a row.
The Welfare Pension Plan
hey
Gold and silver are sporting morning wood.
The dollar index popped early then took a nose-dive on this news.
This should be an interesting finish to the week.
At what point is some of the 92 million people going to wake up one morning and say " you know, this ain't right!" and "I did not cause this!" and "today I am going to do something about my situation!"
At what point is this going to happen??
The graph of total people not in the labor force is not useful. How about a graph of total people employed over time, average income over time, and full time vs. part time over time, or single jobs vs. multiple jobs over time, and self employed but not actually working.
Here is a barfable stat - population 1978 222 million. Today 319 million. Yet we have the same number working. Hmm i smell recovery...NOT
So in the US if you are on the dole you are not required to look for a job? So 1 million people just decided they won't look for a job because they don't have to?
"Young At Heart"
Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you
If you're young at heart.
For it's hard, you will find, to be narrow of mind
If you're young at heart.
You can go to extremes with impossible schemes.
You can laugh when your dreams fall apart at the seams.
And life gets more exciting with each passing day.
And love is either in your heart, or on it's way.
Don't you know that it's worth every treasure on earth
To be young at heart.
For as rich as you are, it's much better by far
To be young at heart.
And if you should survive to 105,
Look at all you'll derive out of being alive!
And here is the best part, you have a head start
If you are among the very young at heart.
[Musical interlude]
And if you should survive to 105,
Look at all you'll derive out of being alive!
And here is the best part, you have a head start
If you are among the very young at heart.
I think the BLS needs to remove one letter from its acronym. I'll let you guess which one.
LOL, There missing some letters, U,L,H,i,T.
BLS reported that in 20% of American families nobody works just a week ago?
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/famee.pdf
Grab the popcorn, this might just be "the summer of discontent". I'm gonna sit this one out.
These people need to live in work camps.
So it isn't just the weather that is back in the 70s?
I wonder how they will count someone not in the "workforce," but who is actively revolting against their kind?!
"Unemployment is down, as another 1 million entered the revolution last month."
Job posting: "Guillotine operators..."
""puzzled why so many unemployed people are not looking for jobs."
Seriously? Has it occurred to them that they don't NEED those available jobs? That they have thrown up their hands and are now working quite happily under-the-table...off-the-books, and out of the tax-paying base? I mean, unless you are finding bodies in the streets, it's gotta occur to people that these folks are managing somehow. Cash only, no paper or electronic trail. No way to trace, or tax it. And a frustrated government looks on as tax reciepts fall, but "the people" don't seem to be sufferring all that much...what the heck? How are they DOING it?
The only reason the rich have been able to get all their tax breaks is because enough of us were still paying ours. What happens when too many of us stop paying in, and they can't tax our incomes because officially, we don't HAVE any? On the record, it looks like you live on disability and the cash you get from collecting cans. But off the record, you live quite comfortably off your side business doing handyman work for your neighbors...
Why wouldn't someone choose that instead of working at McDonald's? If the fish aren't biting, it's because whatever you have on the hook isn't worth the effort.
Americans do not feel well. Energy level is depleted. Zest for Life is gone. They know they are in the middle of elimination....it is obviously just looking around. Kidney and liver disease from the garbage called processed food is taking its toll. Debt burden and the LIES, ALL THE FUCKING LIES is also a boulder on the shoulder of the average American citizen.
"The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the aggregate participation rate will be 62.5% in 2020" ???
While the labor force participation rate crashed to 62.8% http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-02/one-million-people-dropped-out-...