In what is being called the Fiscal Year of Failure, the Job Creators Network says we are seeing the new normal of low expectations, that has not beein seen since the 1970s.
The chief executives of Job Creators Network, the voice of real job creators that has been missing from the debate on jobs and our economic crisis, say the monthly unemployment number is worthless.
Job Creators Network says the hollowing out of the labor force is a much more dramatic development than the unemployment rate. In the last fiscal year, the percentage of able-bodied adults who dropped out of the workforce has increased markedly and the participation rate has hit a low not seen since 1977.
“The labor force participation rate was at 63 percent or below for at least 11 of the 12 months of the recent fiscal year,” said Douglas Haugh, president of Mansfield Oil. “We haven’t seen that since 1977 and it shows worker engagement in the economy is stuck on a ‘new normal’ of low expectations.”
The labor force participation rate, a measure of the percentage of work-eligible adults who participate in the workforce, was 62.7 percent for September 2014, according to the monthly update just released by the U.S. Department of Labor. The report also showed the unemployment rate for September moved down to 5.9 percent, as 248,000 new jobs were added.
“Worker participation was hovering around 64 percent or better just three years ago, and stayed in the 66 percent range or better for two decades before 2009,” said Haugh, a member of Job Creators Network. “That rapid drop of just three percentage points from the historical norm effectively hides 6 million adults who dropped out and are no longer counted as unemployed in the official stats.”
The participation rate has been capped at 63 percent for six consecutive months. The only break in the trend over the last fiscal year was a 63.2 measurement during March, and that was followed by a drop to 62.8 percent in April.
Haugh said “Those missing workers could fill every job in Illinois, one of our largest state economies, and they’ve vanished over a very short period of time. We’re overstating the health of our economy until we recognize and fix what caused them to leave.”
Labor Force Participation Rate Video from Job Creators Network