People Not In Labor Force Soar By 522,000, Labor Force Participation Rate Lowest Since 1981 t is just getting sad now. In April the number of people not in the labor force rose by a whopping 522,000 from 87,897,000 to 88,419,000. This is the highest on record. The flip side, and the reason why the unemployment dropped to 8.1% is that the labor force participation rate just dipped to a new 30 year low of 64.3%. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/peopl...00-labor-force-participation-rate-lowest-1981
It's an oversimplification, but you can't help but notice that Reagan's government spending did a hell of a lot more than Obama's. Chalk one up for supply side.
Didn't Reagan spend a lot on war and defense items.... things which employ people to make things? While Odumbo's spending primarily is on (1) lavish personal vacations for his family, and (2) hand outs to buy votes from the hoi polloi? If we were going to run MASSIVE deficits, I'd rather have seen that money to go employing people to repair and rebuild highways, bridges, electrical infrastructure.
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/US_Labor_Participation_Rate_1948-2011_by_gender.svg">
Sure... the more people who drop out of the work force (and expect to make their living from Odumbo hand-outs), the lower the official/phony unemployment rate. If people didn't get such generous benefits for not working and got a little hungry, they'd be more willing to work.
to be fair though the absolute number of people not in the labor force has risen steadily with population, so new records are not a shock. What is strange is that its first derivative has not changed much.. it would be very helpful to have a plot of the absolute number of people with jobs over the same time period, rates are deceiving just as we see with the unemployment rate.
Why does Romney need to do anything? Won't he be inheriting the work of the greatest jobs president ever?