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smoorman1024  ·  3938 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why the recovery isn't helping Democrats in the midterm polls

Yeah.... What recovery? Is immediately what I thought when I read this title.

The headline unemployment figure has been going down, but at the same time the Labor Participation rate has been going down also. So for each person who decides that they do not want to try to find a job anymore both the labor participation rate and the headline unemployment go down. That is not something you want at all.

Take a look at these two graphs here from The Bureau of Labor and Statistics

Unemployment Rate

http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers_LNS14000000_2004_2014_all_period_M04_data.gif

Labor Participation Rate

http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers_LNS11300000_2004_2014_all_period_M04_data.gif

Unfortunately these images are gif so they will not embed automatically