April\’s employment data are out and, on one level, it was a very good month: 288,000 new jobs created and unemployment down to 6.3%.
Not surprisingly, Democrats are crowing about those numbers – as I would if I were one of them, given that, though no great shakes per se, they are among the best we\’ve seen during the almost 5 1/2 years President Obama has been in office.
But here\’s a number they won\’t be crowing about. which you ought to know: 79.8%.
What is that 79.8%? It is the percentage of people 25 – 29 years of age who either have a job or are seeking one. This means over 20% of that age group is out of the workforce (neither employed nor even looking for work).
That is the single lowest percentage of working 25 – 29\’s in the 32 years that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been keeping records of them. And here is the chart to prove it:
What this tells us is that, those glossy job creation and unemployment numbers notwithstanding, we remain in deep trouble.
When this many 25 – 29 year olds – a prime employment age – are out of the workforce (i.e. they\’ve given up even looking) – there is no way to sugar-coat what it means.
And that goes just as much for the grossly misleading 288,000 new jobs and 6.3% unemployment rate.
See, the rest of the story is that while 288,000 new jobs were created in April, over 800,000 people left the workforce. This leaves us with a 62.8% level of job participation – the lowest in almost 35 years. It also explains the drop to 6.3% unemployment: people who drop out of the workforce are not counted in unemployment data.
From Ylan Q. Mui\’s article for the Washington Post:
Thenumber of re-entrants — people looking for a job after being out ofthe labor market — plunged by 417,000, the largest drop on record.New entrants declined by 126,000. Many high school and collegestudents typically begin entering the job market in April, but thenumber of people younger than 25 in the workforce fell by 484,000.The participationrate for teens ages 16 to 19 hit the second-lowest level ever.
Still impressed with the jobs data? I doubt it.
That\’s something to keep in mind when you are told – as you will be over and over again – how greatly improved our economy is.
It isn\’t.
