Labor Force Participation Paints Bleak Economic Picture

     Yesterday, the weekly claims for unemployment benefits dropped to a multi-year low, or at least that is what the Obama administration would have anyone believe who still has even a modicum of trust in the juked statistics coming from the Executive branch. While the administration crowed about the questionable data being evidence that this flaccid economy is miraculously showing signs of improvement, the Labor Force Participation Rate is at a 35 year low. An improving job market can not co-exist with a falling Labor Force Participation Rate, no matter who is in the White House.
     The 63.2 percent Labor Force Participation Rate is not only the lowest since 1978, the height of another Democrat president's rein by the name of Jimmy Carter, it is illustrative of the disconnect that exists between reality and the Obama administration's economic data that they spew on a regular basis from the depths of the White House bowels. Steve Hayes, senior writer for The Weekly Standard, has recently illustrated one such data point manipulation. Mr. Hayes has accurately stated that if the Obama administration used the same formula to calculate the unemployment rate as every prior administration, the unemployment rate would stand at a staggering 15%.
      But back to the Labor Force Participation Rate, which was approximately 66% or above the entire 8 years of the George W. Bush administration, and when Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. The current president holds the dubious distinction of presiding over the largest drop in the Labor Force Participation Rate in any five year period in this country's post-World War II history. This means that when Barack Obama was droning on incessantly in his inaugural speech on January 20, 2009 and promised to put America back to work, there were 8 million more persons working then that are not working now.
     It is important to note that defenders of the President's economic policy point to the plummeting Labor Force Participation Rate as a function of baby boomers retiring. But if the jobs that these retirees held are also retiring, and not being filled by younger workers, the job market is indeed bleak and desperate. If participation in the labor force continues to fall in conjunction with the mass retirement of baby boomers, all being supported by tax payer-funded social security, remaining workers in the labor force will necessarily have to cede a higher percentage of their incomes to taxes. This, of course, will mean less money being spent in the private economy and more money being grafted by big government.
     The shrinking number of persons participating in the labor force is planned economic devastation resulting in more dependence on government, and those who control it. The Obamaites' political fortunes are fed by the economic misery of a once free and prosperous nation. I fear that it is becoming more difficult by the day, month, and year to reverse the downward spiral of which the falling Labor Force Participation Rate foretells.