The Real Jobs Report: Americans Have Stopped Looking For Work

You know that phrase devil is in the details? That couldn’t apply more to today’s jobs report.

In taking a closer look, according to The New York Times,

The share of American adults with jobs fell slightly to 58.6 percent in August as population growth outpaced job growth.

The United States is more than four years into a recovery so weak that this “employment rate” has not recovered at all. As I noted last month, 63 out of 100 adults had jobs before the recession. Now 59 do.

A growing number of Americans have just stopped trying to find jobs – which therefore takes them statistically out of the unemployment rate. The 7.3% rate is accurate, but when considering the number of Americans who have just stopped attempting to find work, the real unemployment numbers are much more sobering.

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein wrote:

The other is that people stop looking for jobs, and so they’re no longer counted as technically unemployed. That’s what happened here. The number show 312,000 people dropping out of the labor force.

This jobs report, once again, is a disappointment. Americans deserve better.