- Joined
- Jan 29, 2011
- Messages
- 11,265
- Reaction score
- 2,921
- Gender
- Undisclosed
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
Ok, I see now ... the 500,000 dropped from the labor force was for January, not February. Thanks for clarifying.There was a big thread on it back in February on here, I couldn't find it, I'll look here in a minute, but there was reportedly around 500,000 jobs lost in February which "dropped out of the working force, and was considered no longer looking for work"
The Employment Disappearing Act: Where Did 500,000 Jobs Go? - WhatTheyThink
Unemployment Rate Drops to 9% (if you believe it) but 504,000 drop out of the labor force | Scotty Starnes's Blog
January 2011 Unemployment Rate Drops Due to Labor Force Drop of 504,000, Not Due to People Finding Jobs | Grownup Economics
Regardless, I factored those dropped from the labor force in the drop in unemployment. After factoring the drop from the labor force, unemployment still fell by more than half a million. That is why the unemployment rate has been dropping over the last few months.
Looking at January alone:
Unemployment fell by 622,000 (BLS.gov: unemployment level)
Not Labor force increased by 319,000 (BLS.gov: not in labor force)
Net was a decrease in unemployment of 303,000 -- this led to a decrease in the unemployment rate of 0.4 percentage points to 9.0%.