I love that unemployment figure.
Labor Participation Rate (Labor force) (% of working age Americans actively employed or looking for work)
Jan 2009 - 65.7%
Today - 62.8% (lowest since 1977)
Labor force in 2009 -
154,200,000 of 235,692,400 @ 7.8% = 142,172,400 employed = 12,027,600 unemployed.
81,492,400 not in labor force
Labor force today -
155,724,000 of 247,439,000 @ 6.7% = 145,266,000 employed and 10,458,000 unemployed
91,361,000 not in labor force
if you adjust the #s for the 2009 labor force participation rate with today's total population and employment stats it looks like this.
162,567,423 of 247,439,000 -- 145,266,000 employed = 17,301,432 unemployed = 10.6% unemployment
this doesn't not include the millions of illegals here working and the millions more crossing every year.
How this is relevant is that due to a 10 million person exodus of the labor force due to a stumbling economy, the unemployment rate has managed to drop simply because we are no longer losing more jobs than we are participation in the labor force. While there are jobs being created, not fast enough. Large part because of the uncertainty of the markets which are being artificially inflated by the federal reserve.
Once he feds stop with the QE garbage, stock will likely crash 15-20% pretty much overnight, sending the economy into even more turmoil. It HAS to happen as they cannot just continue quantitative easing until the end of time. It will stop and the markets will crash. That is how economy works. The more false securities pumped into the stock markets now, the more that will be lost when it crashes once the pull the plug on QE and raise the interest rates to where they should be.
You can ignore the critics, you can ignore the commentary, you can ignore history, but you simply cannot ignore the math.