Unemployment is down... At least, the official number is. But if you look at labor force participation (a much more useful measure, in my view), it's down to 62.6% – a number last seen in 1977. For those of you who are less ancient than I am, let me remind you that 1977 was Jimmy Carter's first year in office. The country was suffering from a terrible recession, partly driven by skyrocketing oil prices. In that context, consider that our labor force participation rate has just declined to a level matching those parlous economic times. Yeah, that's how good our economy is doing!
For the government to claim that unemployment is falling sounds like Orwellian doublethink, no?
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