Susan Jones throws out a bunch of numbers to start her July 8 article on the latest unemployment numbers:
The civilian labor force expanded in June, adding 414,000 people, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
The number of employed people increased by 67,000 to 151,097,000 in June, but the number of unemployed people increased even more, by 347,000 to 7,783,000.
The unemployment rate ticked up two-tenths of a point to 4.9 percent.
BLS said 94,517,000 Americans were not in the labor force in June, a slight improvement from May’s record 94,708,000; and after dropping for three straight months, the labor force participation rate increased a tenth of a point to 62.7 percent in June.
Note that none of the numbers she’s tossing around is the really important one: number of jobs created. Taht number — 287,000 — doesn’t get mentioned until the sixth paragraph of her article.
Jones also surprisingly undermines her and CNS’ obsession with presenting the labor force participation rate as a meaningful measure of employment by admitting the large number is largely driven by retiring baby boomers:
Last month, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen told Congress the Fed is keeping a close eye on the labor force participation rate. She said she expects that rate to “continue declining in the coming years because we have an aging population.”
As baby-boomers retire, “they work less,” she noted, even though younger people “participate more.”
People who have not actively looked for work in the previous month are not counted as participating in the labor force.
Of course, that didn’t get mentioned until the ninth paragraph of the article. Jones’ noting that “Yellen told Congress that ‘a sign of a strengthening labor market is to see people who were discouraged brought back into the labor force'” — which further undermines the way Jones presented her numbers — is buried even farther down.