RECORD 95.3 MILLION Out of Work Under Trump

[rsacamano]

[progree]

1. 95.4 million adults (age 16+) "without jobs" (not in labor force)

(I round 95.385 million to 95.4 million, as is conventional)

BLS: Not in Labor Force (age 16+): https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS15000000



Below is Not in Labor Force, January through October in thousands -- note it is 1,019,000 higher in October than it was in January, when Obama was still president (until noon on January 20). But I bet you didn't hear about that from Trump or from the media.

2017 94,366 94,190 94,213 94,375 94,983 94,813 94,657 94,785 94,417 95,385

Nor when the fantastic jobs report for October came out on Friday Nov 3, did you hear that the number of jobless people increased by 968,000 in the past month? No, but when Obama was president all the media talked about was people dropping out of the labor force in hopelessness and despair.

During the campaign, Trump would constantly talk about 94 million jobless people.

By the way, Packman does a good job explaining that this number includes genuine retirees, including centenarians, students, etc. And that this number can rise in a good economy as well as in a bad economy.

A more useful statistic is Not in Labor Force, Wants Job http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS15026639

January through October in thousands
2017 5,739 5,597 5,781 5,707 5,561 5,431 5,420 5,844 5,628 5,185



Notice in January, for example, it was only 5739/94366 = 6.1% of those not in the labor force. In October, it is only 5185/95385 = 5.4% of those not in labor force.

Both of these series are seasonally adjusted, BTW.

I should add that these numbers are extremely volatile from month-to-month (as are all of the BLS's Household Survey numbers). The one month changes are more noise than signal. For example, here are the monthly changes in the Not in Labor Force numbers from January through October in thousands. (Again, these are seasonably adjusted numbers)

-736 -176 23 162 608 -170 -156 128 -368 968

[markpkessinger]

2. You know . . . .

. . . when Republicans, during Obama's presidency, tried to use the number of people who were not in the work force in order to make the unemployment number appear to be larger than it actually was, we Democrats rightly pointed out that it was specious and dishonest to suggest that it was a fair indicator of unemployment because under all other presidents, the unemployment numbers had been arrived at by counting only those who were actively seeking work. In other words, it was counting one way for other presidents, and another way for President Obama. And we were right about that. So I don't exactly think we get a pass for doing the same thing with respect to Trump. Dishonest uses of statistics are dishonest irrespective of which party uses them dishonestly.

[liberalnarb]

3. He makes this point in the beginning of the video.