The oxymoron of the labor force when labor means not working: 92 million Americans are not in the labor force with 12 million of those being added only in the last 4 years.

Jon Banking, Blogosphere, Economy, Education, Government, Market Commentary, Special Interests

This week we will be getting the employment numbers. The unemployment rate is expected to stay steady or even drop which is comical given that we have 92 million Americans not working today and another 19 million that are fully unemployed. Those not in the labor force continues to grow beyond the basic changes in demographics. This topic rarely receives any coverage since those not working largely have no funds to back lobbying groups or to put ads out in the media. Yet we can see this dissatisfaction when Americans are asked about their views on the economy. The majority think the economy is doing poorly and this is expected given the underlying numbers. You have young Americans going to college and many are coming out to low wage jobs and hefty student loans. In the last 4 years alone we have added 12 million Americans to the not in the labor force category. This measure is used to calculate the unemployment rate and given this group is not factored in, the unemployment rate looks much better than it truly is. The oxymoron that we have is we have a labor force that is largely not doing labor.
Labor force not working
The biggest startling fact most Americans are unaware of is that one out of three Americans support the other two-thirds of the nation. First, you have the massive 92 million not in the labor force. Another 19 million are labeled as unemployed. Then you have over 32 million working in government jobs. When we look at the actual private sector workforce, we then begin to see that our employment numbers are not as great as many would like you to believe.
Take a look at these figures:

This post was published at MyBudget360 on November 2, 2014.