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LFPR is vastly more useful than UE rate. LFPR tells us the raw percentage of Americans over the age of 16 who currently have jobs. Period. No fluff. No BS. Everyone counts and nobody gets left out. Just the straight up numbers. Politicians like the UE rate because it's cleaned up to make it look better than it actually is.
The LFPR is not cooked, but requires additional analysis to really see what's going on. Case in point, look at the numbers I posted regarding LFPR and age. It is perfectly conceivable that Obama's defenders have been right and the losses in LFPR is all because of a surge in baby boomer retirees. Another example: From 1948 to 1968, the LFPR was consistently under 60% -- absolutely terrible by today's standards. And this was during the best economy that the USA had ever seen before or since. In that case, it was still a strong cultural norm for women to stay at home and not enter the work force. Women staying out of the work force kept the LFPR artificially low till about 1990.
LFPR is useful right now because we're not seeing any trend keeping entire demographics out of the workforce in large numbers. Telling a woman she has to stay at home, pregnant and in the kitchen doesn't fly these days. We live in an era where every gender, age and race demographic actually wants to be working. In fact, it is a massive cultural taboo to tell any demographic that they shouldn't be working. There also hasn't been any polio-like massive debilitating plague causing a massive increase in working aged Americans who are physically unable to actually work. Anytime anyone says "the economy is getting better" the LFPR is a great tool to confirm or deny what they're claiming. If the LFPR is not trending upwards then we know for certain that whatever else the economy is doing, it is not creating enough jobs for working class Americans. We need to net significantly more job creation just to keep pace with our population growth.
The LFPR does not include everyone over 16. Its based on the civilian non-institutionalized population
The LFPR calculation is based on the same "cooked" numbers that are used to calculate the UE rates.
The problem with the LFPR is in determining what percentage represents a good number. It includes many people who have no intention, ability or desire to work. In spite of your assertion not everyone of every age "actually want to be working." My 90 year old father in-law is perfectly happy not working.
How many of the Not in the Labor Force part of the calculation actually want to or have the ability to be working? That is more difficult to determine. Which is why the LFPR is not a great tool for determining the employment health of the country.
What period had a better improvement in the U6 number?
As I said, it is silly for you to ask such a question when the U6 number is not even 20 years old and only two recessions (one of which was extremely insignificant) have had calculations under it. That you have now stated this snotty comment twice just makes you look buffoonish.
If you want to make comparisons however, we can look at the U4 and U5 rate and compare it to recessions prior to 1994. The early 1980s recession for example experience rapid job growth and falls in unemployment rate even while labor force participation skyrocketed throughout the decade.
The LFPR does not include everyone over 16. Its based on the civilian non-institutionalized population
The LFPR calculation is based on the same "cooked" numbers that are used to calculate the UE rates.
So you're saying that a stat that leaves out institutionalized population is cooked. How? The UE rate leaves out college students ... unless they have jobs. It leaves out housewives even if they want jobs. It leaves out everyone that hasn't looked for work recently enough. It leaves out the elderly even though many elderly are actually employed currently. The UE rate is blind to so many groups and demographics that it just gets more and more useless over time.
The LFPR is different. It is more useful because it doesn't ignore huge segments of the US population.
Quote:
The problem with the LFPR is in determining what percentage represents a good number. It includes many people who have no intention, ability or desire to work. In spite of your assertion not everyone of every age "actually want to be working." My 90 year old father in-law is perfectly happy not working.
How many of the Not in the Labor Force part of the calculation actually want to or have the ability to be working? That is more difficult to determine. Which is why the LFPR is not a great tool for determining the employment health of the country.
The percentage of Americans who aren't working due to age, severe disability or wanting to be a stay at home mom, etc -- those numbers are pretty constant at this point and not seeing massive shifts up or down. There is a large increase of people reaching retirement age, but that has been effectively offset by the surging numbers of retirement-aged folks who either retire and then go and get a different job or don't retire at all.
When it comes to Labor Force Participation Rate? Basically, up is good. Down is bad. It's pretty simple. As for a good healthy baseline percentage, a LFPR over 65 is pretty healthy. Over 66 is very good. Over 67 is awesome. LFPR has not been stable enough for long enough for economists to establish any standards. More importantly, since everyone is so fixated on the totally BS stat known as the Unemployment Rate, politicians and the economists working for them don't bother with studying and explaining the LFPR much.
The headline unemployment rate fell to 6.7% according to figures released by the U.S. Department of Labor. Economists had predicted 196,000 new jobs last month and that the rate would remain unchanged at 7%.
If the same metrics used during the Clinton administration were used now, and the people who quit participating (because they stopped looking) were added back in, unemployment would be well above 12%. I'm sure they'll start counting all those new 29 hour a week jobs as being fully employed as well; they'll have to.
If the same metrics used during the Clinton administration were used now, and the people who quit participating (because they stopped looking) were added back in, unemployment would be well above 12%. I'm sure they'll start counting all those new 29 hour a week jobs as being fully employed as well; they'll have to.
The metrics got changed in 1994 so you cannot look previous to that and make any kind of comparisons.
If we went by 1994 numbers before the change than UE is close to 25%.
A lot of changes happened under Clinton that made America appear a lot more prosperous than it really was.
I heard that too. I just don't see how cold weather for a few days effect people searching for work? lol. Most people search for work on their computers these days. Weather shouldn't affect this at all.
If I were an employer, I would not consider anyone who would "call out" because it is "too cold" outside. I is good to be able to weed them out before they even get offered the job.
If the same metrics used during the Clinton administration were used now, and the people who quit participating (because they stopped looking) were added back in, unemployment would be well above 12%. I'm sure they'll start counting all those new 29 hour a week jobs as being fully employed as well; they'll have to.
The Clinton administration is the one that changed the metric. It is one of the reasons why the Clinton years had such low low unemployment rates. Granted, the economy was really good then, but the real rate was probably closer to 5% than the lower than 4% that the official rate posted for much of his presidency.
I guess the conservatives were wrong that Obama was going to destroy the American economy over the last 5 years.
Ooooops.
Obama can't make a peanut butter sandwich... don't give him that much credit. He is a bystander who does his best to make association between his reign and anything slightly positive.
Obama is the guy who shoots a hole in a peice of paper and then draws a circle around it to show off his marksmanship.
Obama did his best to supress the economy and create job loss to make it easier to install his socialist agenda thru the obamacare trojan horse.
The guy who spends 1million $$$ to create a temporary 40 k job and loses 500K on Solyndra despite warnings and his snicker at the question of where were the shovel ready jobs, has been a bystander to the US economy whose weight cannot keep it still. More evidence that there is no cause and effect relationship between obama and any creative accounting creep of the US economy. More cause and effect evidence that Obama has suffocated the US economy.
If I were an employer, I would not consider anyone who would "call out" because it is "too cold" outside. I is good to be able to weed them out before they even get offered the job.
That isn't very kind. Sometimes cold weather can be a serious health hazard. Here in Atlanta when the cold front hit earlier this week all were advised to avoid driving if possible. The city has no defense against ice on the road unlike cities further north. I would have called out on a day like that if I had the time off available to do so.
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I is good to be able to weed them out before they even get offered the job. 
