Corporate profits are sky-high, Wall Street is on an historic winning streak – and President Obama must be extremely grateful that commentary about his framework nuclear deal with Iran sucked up all the media oxygen so that the terrible jobs report that came out on Friday was largely ignored.
Zero Hedge gives us the macro view:
So much for yet another "above consensus" recovery, and what's worse it is, well, about to get even worse, because while the Fed keeps baning some illusory drum that slack in the economy is almost non-existent, the reality is that in March the number of people who dropped out of the labor force rose by yet another 277K, up 2.1 million in the past year, and has reached a record 93.175 million.
Indicatively, this means that the labor force participation rate dropped once more, from 62.8% to 62.7%, a level seen back in February 1978, even as the BLS reported that the entire labor force actually declined for the second consecutive month, down almost 100K in March to 156,906.
Why is this important? Because as long as the true employment rate, that of the civilian employment to total population, remains at depression levels, there will be no incrases in average hourly earnings.
According to the BLS, the more than 12 million black people not in the labor force in March means that they did not have a job or actively seek one in the past four weeks. The number climbed from 12,122,000 in February to 12,202,000 in March, an increase of 80,000.
The labor force participation rate for this group, which is the percentage of the population who participated in the labor force by either having a job or actively seeking one, declined from 61.2 percent in February to 61.0 percent in March.
The unemployment rate for black people in March was 10.1 percent, which is nearly double the overall national unemployment rate of 5.5 percent. Last month, the unemployment rate for black people was 10.4 percent.
You guessed it. Another record.
And how is the president's war on women going?
According to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 56,131,000 million women were not in the labor force last month, an increase of more than 100,000 from February when 56,023,000 women were not in the workforce.
The level is a record high, and the labor force participation for the month of March at 56.6 percent is a 27-year low, according to CNS News. In February that rate for women was 56.7 percent.
Yep, you read it. Another record.
With Obama rewriting the record books on economic failure, it shouldn't surprise you that the Atlanta Federal Reserve is forecasting zero growth for the first quarter of this year.
The record non-participation in the labor force is telling us something important and historic. Americans are giving up and dropping out. Kids are moving back in with their parents, parents moving in with their kids; some take early retirement, others try to make a living on the margins of society, while others simply go on permanent public assistance.
We have never seen it this bad. And there doesn't appear to be much hope that the employment and wage situation will turn around any time soon.
Hat tip: Drudge
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/04/obamas_record_breaking_economy.html#ixzz3WOIFOQQB
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