I was clicking around the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, trying to understand the employment picture in America. Each month, a new employment report comes out. The latest report – the one for April – showed that the unemployment rate had fallen to 5.4 percent. That’s a good thing. Frankly, an unemployment rate of 5.4 percent isn’t horrible. It’s a vast improvement over the 10 percent unemployment rate the nation was laboring under in October 2009. (Pun fully intended.) The report also showed that U.S. non-farm employers added 223,000 jobs in April. That also is a good thing. It’s not great. It needs to be better, but it’s a good thing. The number was just shy of the 224,000 economists predicted. Unfortunately, the BLS downgraded March job numbers to 85,000 from its original 126,000 estimate. February’s job gains were revised upward from 264,000 to 266,000. That means 39,000 fewer jobs were created during February and March that the BLS first estimated. Next month, we’ll see how April’s number holds up. But over the past three months, job gains have averaged 191,000 per month, which just isn’t enough to really get the economy rolling. Folks in the Obama administration like to remind us that 10 million jobs have been added since October 2009 when the unemployment rate was 10 percent. That is absolutely true. But when you look at other employment numbers, you start seeing why – despite a 4.6 percent drop in the unemployment rate – robust economic growth remains elusive. All the numbers I will cite are a comparison of October 2009 to April of this year. To be included in the numbers you have to be at least 16 years old. The labor force – the number of people who have jobs or are seeking a job – grew from 153.8 million to 157 million – a gain of 3.2 million. So there actually were 3.2 million more people competing for those 10 million jobs created during the same time period. The number of people working part time, but prefering full-time work, decreased from 9 million to 6.6 million. The labor participation rate – the percentage of those people who are either employed or are actively looking for work – fell from 65 percent to 62.8 percent. That’s the lowest it’s been since the late 1970s. The number of people who are no longer actively searching for work are not included in the participation rate. The total number of employed rose from 138.4 million to 148.5 million. (There’s the often-cited 10 million jobs created number.) But at the same time, the employment-to-population ratio has risen just 0.8 percent, from 58.5 percent to 59.3 percent. That’s the percentage of the U.S. population that has a job. The number of unemployed fell from 15.4 million to 8.5 million – a decrease of 6.9 million people. The total number of people not in the labor force rose from 82.7 million to 93.2 million. (That explains the decrease in the labor participation rate.) Then there’s what the BLS calls the U-6. That’s the total number of unemployed, plus total employed part-time workers who’d prefer full time, plus all marginally attached workers, as a percentage of the labor force. (Marginally attached is someone who currently wants a job, has looked for work in the last 12 months and is available for work.) That percentage has decreased from 17.1 percent to 10.8 percent. Now, if you ask me, I think that U-6 number is a lot closer to the true unemployment rate in this country today. The U.S. Department of Commerce has a Bureau of Economic Analysis. I was poking around there, too. In the first quarter of 2015, gross domestic product increased at an annual rate of 0.2 percent. That’s not good. GDP increased by 2.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014. (GDP is defined as the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period. It includes all of private and public consumption, government outlays, investments and exports, less imports.) I realize that’s a lot of numbers, but here’s the thing. The economy just doesn’t seem to want to take off. I’ve lived through several recessions in my lifetime. (A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth as measured by GDP.) Each time, the economy bounced back fairly rapidly, sometimes in as little as eight months. At worst it took just short of two years before we saw GDP growing at 4 percent, which is what economists say has to happen to see robust job growth. I am no expert, but it’s clear we’ve been bouncing around just above and mostly below 2 percent GDP growth for the last six years. I really just wish things would turn around. I know the last recession was a really bad one. I get that. But six years to recover? I’m starting to wonder if this tepid economic growth isn’t some type of new normal for the U.S. I don’t really want to assess blame, but I think its fair to say whatever Washington policymakers are doing to promote growth simply isn’t working.
