Unemployment rate is heading down.

[sck5]

Well, I am not one for conspiracy theories. I think the politicians arent smart enough to figure this one out. I actually blame the news people for reporting the wrong statistic when better ones are actually on the same damn page (in the case of the u6 number) or easily googleable (if that is a word) in the case of the emratio. It is hard for me to figure what axe to grind they might have - on the one hand, I always imagine them to be chasing ratings which might say they would want higher numbers and so more drama. On the other hand they are all owned by large corporations and so might have corporate imperatives but I can't figure out what those might be in this case.

Who knows? But I for one am convinced by the data I see that employment crashed when the recession hit and has basically stayed that way since - Movements in the headline number since then are basically either statistical noise or problems with the data measures.

[PBzeer]

Politics is the art of perception. Reality, often has no bearing on it. The only verifiable numbers for employment are how many people apply for unemployment benefits, how many receive them, and how many no longer receive them. Everything else is just a guess.

[BentSailor]

Actually agree with PBzeer here completely. Whilst we all know there are people who are no longer collecting unemployment benefits that should be counted, we cannot know how many there are and therefore any reporting of said number would be dishonest.

The formulae are always going to be somewhat biased, but the numbers you feed in are limited in what they can tell you unless you go all Big Brother and track everybody's career in detail.

[US27inKS]

The people who dropped out of the work force have been found. They went on disability.

The jump in successful disability claims also is making the unemployment picture look extra rosy because those folks are falling off the jobless rolls.
“If they’re on disability they’re generally not counted,” says Feroli, who estimates that a quarter of those dropping out of the job market are getting disability. “It’s no trivial number.”

Read more: Jobless disability claims soar to record $200B as of January, research from JPMorgan Chase shows - NYPOST.com

[PBzeer]

Or they've "retired", rather than continuing to look for work, even though they want to work.