The latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that the United States supposedly "created" 115,00 jobs in April. Not even President Obama's supporters are cheering loudly over this figure, as it indicates a slowing down of job creation -- and that is if the number is accurate. As many know, BLS jobs numbers are usually a mathematical abstraction based on assumptions and inferences, not hard numbers. In any event, if there were 115,000 jobs created in April, that is below the approximately 200,000 new jobs that must be created in the U.S each month in order to keep up with population growth. In other words, 115,000 new jobs in April would mean that the American unemployment rate would increase.
But in April, again according to the BLS, the U.S. unemployment rate did not increase; in fact it "declined" to 8.1 percent. If job creation is lagging behind the expected entry of new workers into the U.S. labor market, how did the magicians at the Bureau of Labor Statistics construct a reduction in unemployment? Very simple. There are so many discouraged unemployed workers in the United States, they are simply giving up and "leaving" the labor force. In many cases, actually, the BLS is exercising initiative and assuming that a certain proportion of the unemployed simply drop out of the workforce each month.
The real meaning of the April jobs number is that the participation of age-eligible Americans in the labor force -- both working and unemployed -- is at a 30 year low. How is that synonymous with an economic recovery?
In point of fact, a staggeringly high rate of unemployment, made artificially lower by not counting those long-term unemployed workers as being part of the active labor force, is by no means characteristic of a post-recessionary economic recovery. What has recovered since the onset of the global financial and economic crisis in 2008 are equity prices, which have regained almost all of their losses. However, that recovery is not due to increased consumer demand stemming from the reentry into the workforce of formerly unemployed workers. Rather, stock prices regained most of their losses and have enjoyed a recovery due almost entirely to the loose monetary policies of the Federal Reserve under the tutelage of its chairman, Ben Bernanke.
In contrast with the policies of President Franklin Roosevelt during America's Great Depression of the 1930s, which focused on facilitating job creation, the policymakers in the U.S. have focused their efforts on reinflating equity prices through quantitative easing (money printing) and offering banks (including investment banks) historically low interest rates, in effect free money. Perhaps sooner than we can imagine, history will render its verdict on this policy of neglecting a recovery in the labor market in favor of reinflating the stock market.