By Bill Wilson — Obama’s Labor Department report on the unemployment rate no longer passes the smell test as an accurate indicator of economic activity. The fact that the rate dropped almost half a percentage point to 8.6 in spite of the fact that the economy created fewer jobs than is necessary to meet the needs of Americans entering the workforce, puts the final nail in the coffin of the rate having any basis as a realistic indicator of the health of the U.S. economy.
When you look behind the rate, you discover that the percentage of people who are participating in the workforce declined to 64 percent, with the workforce shrinking by one half of 1 percent in the past year alone. One percent in the labor participation rate equates to approximately 1.5 million Americans.
Shockingly, fewer Americans are in the workforce today than a year ago. This is a startling indictment of Obama’s economic policy that has driven approximately 1.5 million Americans out of the workforce. Rather than hope, Obama has delivered economic despair.
Bill Wilson is President of Americans for Limited Government. You can follow him on Twitter at @BillWilsonALG.
