Let's browse through the claims: No, people are defined as being in or not in the labor force based on their responses in the Current Population Survey.
ummmm only if they ARE no longer participants. There's no "potential" about it. The Labor Force is defined as Employed + Unemployed. If someone no longer meets the definition for either, then they are no longer participating in the labor market.
You can't compare December to January, because for January, Census recalculates the population adjustments making the two months non comparable.
Wow! Mostly right. Except unemployed is "actively looking for work," not just "wants a job." But otherwise, good explanation.
But then he enters strange territory:
He's got it a little backwards. He's saying IF the Labor Force participation ratio doesn't change, then unemployment will go go up and the unemployment rate goes up. But it's the opposite. IF those 2 million all start looking for work, THEN Unemployment goes up (and the unemployment rate) AND the LF participation stays the same.
Again, he has the dependent and independent variables reversed. IF, 1.5 million of thos no longer working retired, went back to school, whatever, and .5 million started looking for work, then employment would be 90 million, unemployment would be 8.5 million, and that would CAUSE the Labor Force particpation rate to drop from 100/150 to 98.5/150 and the UE rate to go to 8.5/98.5=8.6%
He's talking like the participation rate can be changed and that makes a change in the number of unemployed. Wrong. The rate changes when the number of people in the labor force changes by a different percent than the population.
[qutoe]In other words, revising our workforce participation rate downwards by 1% made 1.5 million jobless people just plain disappear, and dropped the unemployment rate from 10.0% down to 8.6%.
But you can't revise the workforce particpation by itself. It's the changes in the Labor Force that make the rate change. You can't just move the participation rate and make people "dissappear."
You're really fucked in the head, you do realize this. You cannot displace 22 million working Americans and the unemployment numbers drop without cooking the numbers.
It's simple math. In July, there was a population of 243,354,000 (16 and older not in the military, prison, or an institution) with 142,220,000 employed, 12,794,000 looking for work, and 88,340,000 neither working nor looking for work. So Labor Force is 142,220,000+12,794,000=155,013,000 and the Labor Force Participation is 155,013,000/243,354,000=63.7% and the UE rate is 12,794,000/155,013,000=8.3%
In August, Population went up to 243,566,000 Employment went down to 142,101,000, Unemployment went down to 12,544,000 and Not in the Labor Force went up to 88,921,000. So LF participation dropped to 63.5% because Labor Force went down and Population went up, and the UE rate went from 12,794,000/155,013,000 to 12,544,000/154,645,000=8.1%
Where's the cooking of books? That's all based on survey response.