The U.S. economy shed 23,000 jobs in July and the unemployment rate went down. Not a typo. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that payrolls went negative and the rate “improved” to 4.1 percent, because 264,000 people left the workforce entirely. Stopped looking, stopped being counted. Labor force participation is at 61.4 percent, lowest in five years. The rate didn’t improve. The pool just got smaller.
This is the number they’ll wave around. Four point one. Strong. Meanwhile average monthly job gains this year sit at 34,000. May’s numbers got revised down by 66,000 after the fact. June got cut by another 20,000. The revisions only go one direction. Healthcare is carrying the entire economy on its back like the one competent friend in a group project. Everything else is treading water or going under, and the official response is to point at a percentage that only looks good because a quarter million people gave up.
The unemployment rate doesn’t measure how many people have jobs. It measures how many people the government still bothers to count. And right now, 264,000 Americans are improving the national average by disappearing from it.