USANews版 - Nearly 1 Million Workers Vanished Under Obama |
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发帖数: 29846 | 1 By JOHN MERLINE, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted 01/12/2012 04:29 PM ET
Initial jobless claims unexpectedly jumped by 24,000 last week to 399,000 as
more workers lost their jobs, the Labor Department said Thursday. At the
same time, the economy continues to lose workers.
In the 30 months since the recession officially ended, nearly 1 million
people have dropped out of the labor force — they aren't working, and they
aren't looking — according to data from Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In the past two months, the labor force shrank by 170,000.
This is virtually unprecedented in past economic recoveries, at least since
the BLS has kept detailed records. In the past nine recoveries, the labor
force had climbed an average 3.5 million by this point, according to an IBD
analysis of the BLS data.
"Given weak job prospects, many would-be workers dropped out of (or never
entered) the labor force," noted Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy
Institute in her analysis of the BLS jobs report issued last Friday. "That
reduces the measured unemployment rate but does not represent real
improvement."
According to the BLS, the "labor force participation rate" — the ratio of
the number of people either working or looking for work compared with the
entire working-age population — is now 64%, down from 65.7% when the
recession ended in June 2009. That's the lowest level since women began
entering the workforce in far greater numbers several decades ago.
If you adjust for this drop, the unemployment rate would be close to 11%,
instead of the official 8.5%.
Long-Term Economic Impact
Not only does the shrunken labor force mask the real size of the
unemployment problem in the country — since only those actively looking for
work are counted as unemployed — it likely means that economic growth will
be subpar going forward.
"The fall in the labor force participation rate leads us to mark down the
long-term potential output growth path of the American economy," University
of California-Berkeley economist Brad DeLong wrote on his blog last month. "
It is harder to pull people into employment if they are out of the labor
force than if they are in the labor force and unemployed."
The weak job market has also helped depress wages. Real median annual
household income has dropped 5.1% since the recession ended, more than the 3
.2% decline during the recession itself — according to a new Sentier
Research report.
The smaller labor force is just one of the problems with the current
unemployment number. The other is that the jobs being created aren't keeping
pace with population growth. Since June 2009, the economy has added 1.4
million jobs, which is below the more than 2 million needed to keep up with
population growth and far below the gains experienced at the same point in
the previous 10 recoveries — which saw job gains average more than 4
million. |
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