CHART OF THE DAY
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Notice the drop over the past 4 years…they really know how to keep the unemployment rate better than it should be. Using the average number of the past 8 years would have the unemployment rate easily into the double digits.
The reduction in the labor force includes thousands (millions?) of retiring baby boomers, so the reduction in labor force participation isn’t entirely fake. What’s disturbing is that younger workers aren’t replacing the retiring workers thereby causing trhe participation rate to go down.