Noted in the National Review was that the loss of about 1/4 million jobs actually caused the unemployment rate to go down, to great celebration and hosannas in the white house. Later on in the article, it was revealed that this was accomplished by dropping about 3/4 million folks off the rolls of workers.
In June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the civilian labor force was 154,926,000 people.
In July, 796,000 of those were taken out of their definition of the workforce, and thus their unemployment calculations for this month, because they have stopped looking for work “because they believe no jobs are available for them.” Ten percent of the June workforce would be 15.4 million, 1 percent would be 1.5 million, and so 796,000 is roughly one half of one percent.
In other words, BLS took .5 percent of what you and I would consider unemployed and took them out of their total. And with that, unemployment went down one tenth of one percent.
I suppose that as the first of the baby boomers reach 62, and find themselves out of work and facing grim prospects, they take the much-reduced retirement route to keep the wolves from the door, and thus drop out of the work force. OTOH, the population of the country is inexorably increasing, probably faster than the boomers are receding, so I would expect the overall workforce to get larger, if anything.
On that note, here's a musical interlude, the theme song of the Democratic party for 2008-2012:
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