Chris Matthews said, "Todayâs jobs report was a mixed bag of course. 115,000 jobs were added to payrolls in April. The unemployment rate did drop to 8.1 percent, the lowest rate since President Obama took office." Bueller, Bueller, Bueller...?
You can see from this Shadow Stats chart that the U3 unemployment rate reported by the Department of Labor is increasingly showing a widening disparity from real unemployment rates. <img src="http://www.shadowstats.com/imgs/sgs-emp.gif?hl=ad&t=1336136898"> http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
Enthusiasm and attendance is down on the GOP side as well,McCain drew much bigger crowds then Mitt BTW,When has Mitt ever drew a crowd of 14,000 ?
If the size of the U.S. labor force as a share of the total population was the same as it was when Barack Obama took officeâ65.7% then vs. 63.6% todayâthe unemployment rate would be 11.1%.
If you took your graph and cut it in half, and stretched the right half to make it twice as high, the change since the late '90s would appear even more frightening.
The participation rate isn't only a function of the economy. It's also a function of the demographics. Sociologists have been forecasting a general decline for a while now. With that in mind, there is still no doubt that the realized numbers are worse than expected. You can read an couple of excellent CalculatedRisk blog posts on the subject: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/11/labor-force-participation-rate-what.html http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/labor-force-participation-rate.html