Conservatives want to continue mentioning the participation rate but that could be do to population increases but the U6 rate is more accurate because it ask if you have a job and if you want a job

Trying to tell people the economy and employment are great. When they suck. Will not work unless it is True. People can actually tell if they are working or not. And they can actually tell if they are doing well financially. In my view the economy and employment picture is dismal and getting worse. Maybe this Summer it will improve.

Is it now "liberal" to want people out of the employment numbers? Who knew?

....and it aint good.

First, participation rate matters. We should understand that it should gradually go down, as the population ages...and this model has been plugged into all sorts of predictions, from social security, to GDP projections, to medicare.

The current drop is not, in any way, gradual. And that is a problem. Why is it dropping? There is new information out that SS Disability claims have jumped 20% in the last 5 years. I back projected that this should have been 10%, based on past history...and at least a million people are fraudulently enrolled. This makes for a 0.6% permanent drop in unemployment numbers...but equals perpetual payment out of the SS fund. Again, this was never planned for, and not good at all.

I have taken a gander at the seasonally adjusted jobless claims, vs unadjusted. The differential in these two is an outlier, when compared to the differential in any week, for the last decade. Rose colored glasses stuff. Its like they ignored historical data on the adjustment, and started a new methodology.

We also at the tip of finding the magical 350,000 mark, for claims. However, I submit that with a lower participation rate, the 'churn' of layoffs and hirings should be accordingly smaller...reducing what should be the acceptable number of weekly claims. The participation rate has dropped from 66.5 to 63.7...or around 6 million people. Assuming 150 million are looking for work, the acceptable mark for weekly turnover should be reduced 6 percent...down to 336,000. Nobody has mentioned or noticed this.

Lets look at U6. Technically its dropping...but its at Feb 2009 levels...i.e., a level seen during a recessionary period. It shot up like a rocket, and has never fallen out of that league. It needs to take a sharp drop.

So what? Well, I believe that the message 'employment is getting better' is not resonating with voters. And, quite frankly, they are becoming distrustful of information from the DOL, the media, and the administration.

I anticipate getting flamed for being chicken little, but lets look at one very specific case study:

"Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 243,000 in January, and the unemployment rate decreased to 8.3 percent". This was the DOL end of Jauary report.

Ok, but the same DOL showed a labor participation rate drop from Dec to Jan of 0.3%, or 720,000 people.

The same agency says yes, 720k fewer people are working, but somehow 243k more people have been added to the workforce, and unemployment is down. It defies logic, or belief...and they cannot successfully keep this up for another 9 months to the election. The DOL, media, and administration are about to learn a lesson about not hiding bad news.

The labor participation rate is smaller than the percentage of the population who were actually employed 12 years ago. Millions of people have simply stopped working or looking for work - they know they are unemployable. Some of them have disabilities that in other economic circumstances would not necessarily render them incapable of finding employment. I wouldn't call it "fraudulent"... employers simply don't need to hire anyone who needs even the smallest accommodation.

But "they" have been hiding bad news for a very long time. 9 more months is not difficult.

This problem won't go away. It *could* mind you... but it won't. The solution is to constrain the supply of labor arbitrarily by creating mandatory leave, a shortened work week or raising the cost of overtime to double-time.

But government isn't really about solving problems, it's about placating constituents - the kind of constituents for whom "competitiveness" (i.e. corporate profit) are the only ones who really matter.

time. Sometimes you will have a survey with a larger republican tilt and then a couple of weeks later they correct this and suddenly Obama will be doing a bit better. The pollsters, like the media, are all about the 'horse race.' They want a close election because it keeps things interesting.

so, why pretend it wasn't?

Even at that, they're sometimes a bridge too far.

OH, you mean knuckle dragging religious lunatic homophobic cross burning holocaust denying racist scumbags? I just call them "oppressors", it saves space.