Allow me to explain...
On Friday, the Government announced that 120,000 net new jobs had been created and that the unemployment rate (U3) had dropped from 9% to 8.6% - so far, so good.
Unfortunately, the primary reason that the unemployment rate dropped to 8.6% is that 487,000 people decided to quit looking for work. In other words, for every one person who found a job, four people gave up looking.
Now, I have no idea what these 487,000 people are doing to get by right now, and part of me doesn't even want to know. Suffice to say, we can expect a lot more ad hoc meth labs and volunteers to the French Foreign Legion to crop up in the coming months.
Also, don't ask me by what fucked up math the Government arrives at a reduced jobless rate when people give up looking for work. Suffice to say, someone in the Idiocracy decided that as the unemployment situation goes from bad to worse, that the unemployment rate should go down instead of up. And everyone just went along with the *new* math, especially the Lamestream media which is always fully on board with printing the (U3) number in the headline as good news.
The real story is that given all of the discouraged job seekers, the labor force participation rate - at 64% - has dropped to a level last seen in 1984, back when there were a lot fewer women in the workplace. So, it's Back to the Future to Mr. Mom, I suppose. If I had to stay at home and watch my kids I would jump off the nearest bridge - one less seditious blogger for the Government to fret about...
The real unemployment rate (U6) which gets buried at the back of the report is 15.6%, reflecting the reality of the current situation i.e. not what Big Brother wants us to dwell upon.
So back to my main point, extrapolating that 4:1 ratio above into the future, I will give it about 2 more years until unemployment, as indicated by the headline (U3) statistic, goes to zero. Watch the lamestream media spin masters start scratching their heads like Chimpanzees as the unemployment rate drops like a stone while the streets burn like it's the Fourth of July.
You read it here first.
