Labor Participation Rate on the Skids....

[Cow Poke]

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

labor.gif

[Mountain Man]

This is why the current official unemployment numbers being trotted out every month are meaningless. Of course your unemployment rate will go down when you have record numbers of people dropping completely out of the labor market.

[jpholding]

Try telling that to the Scott Messianics in this state.

In months when the unemployment rate here went DOWN, he said it was because he'd created more jobs.

But in months when the unemployment rate went UP, he said it was because more people were getting back into the workforce.

[Mountain Man]

When President Reagan's economic engine started kicking into gear, unemployment suddenly spiked, but that's only because optimistic workers flooded back into the labor market looking for employment, so the rise in unemployment was offset by a rising labor participation rate. As time went on, the unemployment dropped while labor participation remained high. So there is some logic to the claim that unemployment goes up when more people enter the work force but have yet to find employment.

Of course I'm not saying that's necessarily the case in Florida.

[jpholding]

When President Reagan's economic engine started kicking into gear, unemployment suddenly spiked, but that's only because optimistic workers flooded back into the labor market looking for employment, so the rise in unemployment was offset by a rising labor participation rate. As time went on, the unemployment dropped while labor participation remained high. So there is some logic to the claim that unemployment goes up when more people enter the work force but have yet to find employment.

Of course I'm not saying that's necessarily the case in Florida.

It probably was. Where the issue lies is what happened when the rate went down. Scott was directly asked if that had anything to do with the labor force statistics, as opposed to his alleged efforts at job creation, and he refused to answer.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/poli...le1942820.html

Of course that's nowhere near as hilarious as his denial of his earlier promise to create 1.7 million jobs here as opposed to 700K.

Still can't believe we re-elected this lizard.

[seanD]

Who cares. We're in a rocovery, haven't you heard? Gas prices are low, everyone's got a low wage part time job now and the stock market is shooting to the moon (because all the corporations are using the federal reserve printed billions to buy back their stocks).

[Truthseeker]

Hmmm, what's a roccovery? Like a baroque boom?

[seanD]

It's a recovery that's so solid, it's a rocovery

[Epoetker]

Edwin S. Rubenstein has a better grasp of the elephant in the room:

The labor force participation rate—a sign of worker confidence—rose 0.3 points for foreign-born workers and declined 0.2 points for Americans. At 66.3%, the immigrant LPR is significantly above the American LPR (62.1%).
Unemployment rates fell for both immigrants and native born Americans; at 5.4%, the immigrant unemployment rate remains slightly below that of native-born Americans (5.6%)
The number of working age immigrants rose by 880,000, up by 2.3%. By comparison, the native-born American working-age population rose by just 0.7%.

What really catches our eye is the extraordinary differential between foreign-born and native-born population growth. Since last November the foreign-born population of working age grew by 1.29 million, or by 3.3%, according to the BLS, while the comparable native-born population rose by 987,000 – a gain of just 0.5%.

Two points are worth making. First, should these growth rates persist, the foreign-born population of working-age will double in about 22 years. It will take a whopping 144 years for the native-born population to match that. By then, of course, immigrants will dominate the U.S. workforce.

Secondly, the increase in the foreign-born working-age population over the past year (1.29 million) exceeds the number of legal immigrants admitted annually, which has been running at about 1 million. Obvious implication: A strong U.S. job market is drawing illegals into country. Contra President Obama, the news is not a “very welcome sign for millions of Americans”, but a “very welcome sign” for millions of immigrant workers, many of them illegal.

If history is any guide, President Obama’s administrative order of amnesty will widen the gap between foreign-born and American-born population growth.

I expect roughly the same national trends to hold in Florida, since grinding down the wages of the poor and middle class by importing a huge foreign population to compete with them doesn't affect Scott personally.