Still cooking the books, they are...

Still cooking the books, they are...  The unemployment numbers that came out this morning were, as usual, cooked.  The published “unemployment” number (6.7%) does not include the arbitrarily defined “discouraged workers”, and so therefore does not include all the people who are actually unemployed. The actual labor force participation rate (that is, the percentage of people of working age who are actually working) dropped (again), which would mean the unemployment rate, if measured accurately, would have increased.

Here's the participation rate, 1978 to today (Zero Hedge):

 

1978 – the Jimmy Carter “stagflation” era – is the last time the participation rate was this low.  If you corrected the published unemployment rate using the participation rate, here's what the real unemployment rate would look like (Federalist):

Quite a bit less progress, when viewed with the actual unemployment rate...