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The Spectacle Blog
Although the national unemployment rate fell to 8.1% for the month of April, the decline is due not to job growth but declining participation in the labor market. Simply put a critical mass of people have given up looking for work. Consequently, labor market participation is now at its lowest level in more than thirty years with only 63.6% of the adults in the workforce.
Some stimulus plan.
It’s no wonder that President Obama is dancing on Osama’s watery grave and telling people Romney wouldn’t have called the tune. He is a song and dance man. But song and dance men know how to use smoke and mirrors. It’s up to Mitt Romney to make sure this smoke doesn’t get into the eyes of the electorate and find a clear way to tell people that Obama hasn’t done the job he was elected to do.
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More Blog Posts by Aaron Goldstein
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/05/04/workforce-participation-at-30
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Derek Leaberry| 5.4.12 @ 11:03AM
If the American economy was dominated by well-paying jobs in which a man could support a family without the extra paycheck of his wife, this would be a good statistic. The workforce participation rate for most of the post-World War Two boom must have been below 63.6 % and that was a good thing too. The problem with the American economy isn't the workforce participation rate. The crisis is the lack of high-paying jobs for men.
Jeff P| 5.4.12 @ 12:11PM
Well paying or not, the fact of the matter is that the economy is not expanding. All the MSM and the administration will report is that unemployment is declining. I fear the "declining unemployment rate" story, no matter how unreal, will be sufficient to get the One and many Democrats elected in the fall.
LiveFreeOrDie| 5.4.12 @ 12:26PM
Thank goodness for the Obamabush stimulus package. Can you imagine how bad it would be without it?
W| 5.4.12 @ 12:36PM
There are plenty of high paying jobs but they require skill and an education. More women are graduating from colleges, law schools, med schools, and other graduate schools. These jobs are open to men and women. The high paying jobs in factories and coal mines, traditionally for men, are declining .
Charles Murray's book Losing Ground is excellent on this issue, along with Richard Florida's The Creative Class.
Participation is declining because the economy is weak and manufacturing jobs have declined since this work is done overseas. The only increase in jobs is in the service indutries , government jobs, and the "creative class" as described by Murray.
Dan| 5.4.12 @ 1:15PM
The other thing is that the assessment of what number of Americans has "given up" looking for work is based on nothing more than speculation and projection.
Dan| 5.4.12 @ 1:16PM
America is DYING before our eyes, and creatures like Ayers, like Obama, like obama's handlers behind the scenes, are ecstatic about it!
Seek| 5.4.12 @ 6:38PM
If people can't find jobs anymore to the point of giving up, then why is rush hour traffic in every major metro area jammed bumper to bumper, frustrating the hell out of me? Someone out there is working.
fiscal| 5.5.12 @ 9:23AM
This is the type of comment that makes anyone with an economics background cringe. The truth is that growth in private sector jobs is just fine. Where you have the decline is in public sector jobs, especially in local governments where balanced budgets force communities to fire primarily teachers, firemen, and policemen. So are most of you complaining about government getting smaller? It is, and this is the cost.
Regarding high paying jobs. The primary reason for the loss of jobs has nothing to do with the economy -- it has to do with the huge increases in productivity -- which are permanent. We no longer need lots of people on the manufacturing floor or middle level executives/managers to review the data for executive decisions. It's simply more profitable for computers to do the work than people. This is different in places like China where labor costs are so low that it is still more profitable to have lots of people do the work.
These are longer term trends that have virtually nothing to do with government leadership. It doesn't matter whether Republicans or Democrats are in power, neither of them have a lot to do with the economy. They do have responsibility, however, for not paying for our government. The fault lies on both sides. We absolutely know, from the data, that tax cuts are not stimulative and will not help economic growth -- they only cause deeper deficits. We also know that Democrats have no problem with runaway spending.
The real problem here is that we have a country of economic illiterates who turn economics into political dialog. About the only real world plan I've seen is Simpson-Bowles -- the only plan where the numbers actually add up.
fiscal| 5.5.12 @ 9:28AM
One more comment about high paying jobs... There are some of these jobs available where people do not have the educational background, but these are relatively small compared total jobs available. Looking at the numbers, I can't see how the unemployment number will be reduced more than half a point if ALL of these jobs are filled.
Isn't it ironic that we are falling behind in education and the people we are firing most are teachers???? (Yes, many should be fired, but we should be trying to hire good ones...)