By USDR
The CEOs of the national Job Creators Network today called the US government’s monthly unemployment report “a fairy tale” and agreed with Fed chair Janice Yellen: it’s time to get national unemployment data elsewhere.
“Forget what the March jobs report tells you, it’s worthless,” Parksman Parking CEO and Job Creators Network leader Benton Launerts said. “The real unemployment rate is 10.7 percent, because we don’t count millions of workers fleeing a failing economy during the prime working years of their life.”
The labor force participation rate, which measures the number of healthy adults with a job or looking for one, stood at 66 percent or higher for nearly 20 years prior to 2009, but has since dropped to levels unseen since the late 1970s. It is now 63.2 percent, according to the March unemployment report released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. If the participation rate were still 66 percent, the official unemployment rate would zoom up 10.7 percent, rather than the 6.7 percent revealed this morning.
Last month, the Manhattan Institute analyzed which workers are leaving the workforce and found the biggest loss among those aged 24-54. This means 2.5 million workers in the prime of their earning years have walked away from the labor force and are not being counted in the official unemployment statistics.
Similarly, new Fed chair Janice Yellen announced she looks to workers marginally attached to the labor force, the falling labor force participation rate, and many other factors that more accurately count those missing workers than the official unemployment rate.
“The big news from March is the Federal Reserve doesn’t think the official unemployment rate is a reliable reflection of the economy’s health, and we shouldn’t either,” Launerts said. “We should treat this unreliable statistic as a fairy tale until those millions of young and middle-aged workers re-engage the American Dream.”
ABOUT JOB CREATORS NETWORK
Job Creators Network (JCN) is the voice of real job creators that has been missing from the debate on jobs and our economic crisis. JCN members talk about paychecks, not politics, helping the public and policymakers understand how jobs are created. For more information please visit www.JobCreatorsNetwork.com.
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