
^^^ a willfully uninformed fake news infested Dem
Unemployment rate. At first glance, a steady rate of 3.7% sounds great, but it wasn’t in December. The rate stayed low because about 680,000 people left the workforce and were no longer counted as unemployed. The labor force participation rate fell all the way back to where it was in February.
In fact, labor participation has never recovered to its pre-pandemic trend following the government-imposed shutdowns. Depending on which methodology one prefers, the economy is missing between 4.8 million and 6.8 million workers. Accounting for their absence yields a true unemployment rate between 6.4% and 7.5%.
Kinds of jobs being created: they’re all part-time. Last month, the economy shed a whopping 1.5 million full-time jobs, the biggest monthly plunge since 2020 when the government made it illegal for people to go to work. That wiped out essentially all the full-time jobs that had been gained in 2023.