The Labor Department released the unemployment figures for April on Friday, and at first glance they look pretty good. Those statistics show that 288,000 new jobs were created in April, and the unemployment rate for April was a new low of 6.3%. That's a drop of 0.4% (from 6.7% in March to 6.3% in April).
But don't pop the cork on that champagne yet. This does not mean the economy is improving (GDP grew at a pathetically small 0.1% in the first quarter of 2014, and if not for the new spending from Obamacare, would have registered a negative growth of -1.0%) or the nation's unemployment situation is improving (since that drop in the unemployment rate is more illusion than fact).
The truth is that there are actually less people with a job in April than there was in March (a drop of about 73,000 people -- from 145,742,000 in March to 145,669,000 in April). In other words, there were more jobs lost in April than were created. So how could the unemployment rate have dropped by a substantial amount?
The unemployment rate dropped because the civilian workforce shrank in April by a whopping 806,000 people (from 156,227,000 in March to 155,421,000 in April). That means a little more than 4/5 of a million people gave up trying to find a job, and are no longer being counted by the government as being unemployed. And since the number of the marginally-attached workers (those who are not counted because they didn't look for work in the last four weeks) remained fairly stable at about 2.16 million, it means those people are now completely invisible to the federal government (being recognized neither as unemployed nor marginally-attached).
This is a tragic way to lower the unemployment rate -- making the economy so bad that millions of people give up trying to find a job, and therefore are no longer counted as being unemployed. And it is due to the austerity imposed on this economy by the Republicans (who block any new spending to spur the economy and create jobs). We need to put large numbers of people back to work -- not just stop counting them.
Here are the relevant numbers for April (and remember that this is an undercount of the unemployed -- millions of which are now invisible as far as Washington is concerned):
Demographic breakdown of official unemployment figure:
Adult men...............5.9%
Adult women...............5.7%
Teenagers...............19.1%
Whites...............5.3%
Blacks...............11.6%
Asians...............5.7%
Hispanics...............7.3%
Less than HS grad...............8.9%
HS grad...............6.3%
Some college...............5.7%
Bachelor's Degree or more...............3.3%
Size of the civilian workforce:
155,421,000
Number of people officially counted as unemployed:
9,753,000
Official unemployment rate:
6.3%
Number of people marginally-attached to workforce and no longer counted as unemployed (and probably a huge undercount of these people):
2,160,000
Official unemployment + marginally-attached ( a more realistic unemployment figure -- but still an undercount):
11,913,000
The more realistic unemployment rate:
7.7%
Number of underemployed people (working part-time because they can't find full-time work):
7,465,000
Number of unemployed/underemployed people (an undercount):
19,378,000
Unemployment/underemployment rate:
12.5%
Don't let the new lower official unemployment rate fool you. This economy is far from healthy -- and it won't be fixed as long as we continue this disastrous austerity imposed by the congressional Republicans. They must be voted out of office in November, so this country can return to a sane economic policy.
