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New Normal : Labor Force Participation Falls AGAIN, U3 Unemployment 7.7% in November

By: Will (Diary)  |  December 7th, 2012 at 10:07 AM  | 

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U3 Unemployment Rate Falls to 7.7% in November as Labor Force Participation Declines Again

A Bureau of Labor Statistics report released today shows that the U.S. U3 Unemployment Rate fell by 0.2% in November.

The Labor Force Participation rate also fell by 0.2%, to 63.6%.

The Washington Dispatch began tracking the current employment recovery against that following the 1980s recession with the release of January 2012 unemployment and labor force participation figures earlier this year.

Since unemployment peaked at 10% in October 2009, its decline has mirrored the decline in Labor Force Participation. Looking at the same number of months following peak unemployment of 10.8% in December 1982, Labor Force Participation rose while unemployment fell.

Declining labor force participation, stagnant unemployment, anemic GDP growth, and the Obama administration’s economic policies and record continue to expose the U.S. economy to the risk of a “double-dip” recession.

The Employment–Population Ratio continues to hover around post-recession lows, standing at 58.8% as of October:

Welcome to the “new normal.”

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  • gmat

    U-3 is kind of a fantasy isn’t it? So’s U-6 for that matter. Because neither includes long-term discouraged workers ( > 1 year ). After a year, discouraged workers cease to exist, as far as BLS is concerned.

    The only place I’ve seen anyone try to estimate long-term discouraged and include them in a measure of labor force under-utilization is here:

    http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts

    And that number is still trending up, which comports with the declining participation rate you cited.

    • http://washington-dispatch.com/ Will

      Correct gmat. The government decided in the early 1990s to just ignore these people. TRUE unemployment is somewhere around the 20% range most likely.

  • oldtownyankee

    Will; thanks for these charts as they show how we are being mislead and have been mislead by Obama and the MSM as they continue to prop him up. All the major print media is touting how the November employment numbers is great news in that the economy under this great economic leader is making its come back from the dark days of the Bush years. Every piece that I have read going back to 2010 spoke to this notion that the economy “continues to show signs of recovery” or the economy itself is “solid” and that housing is showing a strong turn-a-round. No one ever mentions that we need about 200,000 new jobs a month just to keep pace will the population growth. even worse; you have to dig deep down into these rosy employment reports to see that up wards of 500,000 people have left the work force for that month!. By these U3 equation, its possible to create no jobs for months and at the same time have the unemployment rate go to close to “0″ if people keep leaving the work force. I don’t think the average person or a vast majority of these low informed voters know how this works.

  • commonsenseobserver

    Workforce participation near record lows, almost 3/4 of jobs growth in recent months from government, a decade before unemployment returns to the pre-recession level at the current rate, the cost of living rising, take-home pay stagnating – what’s there not to like in the Obama economy?