Low US Labor force participation

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Things will magically change come January 20, when the labor market will suddenly become great again

The idea that there are 95 million Americans who are out of work but not counted as unemployed. This statistic pervades the conservative discourse about our economy (or at least until Jan. 20). The implication of this statistic is that the government and media are lying to us. Instead of an economy that’s slowly improving as President Barack Obama has been telling us, our economy is actually a catastrophic failure, unable to provide any work for nearly 100 million people.

Our president-elect, Donald Trump, seems to believe this fake statistic. His newly named economic adviser, Gary Cohn, does too, as do many other Republican politicians. Even trained economists and well-respected market strategists use the 95 million figure as a short-hand way of saying the economy sucks, despite the 4.6% unemployment rate, or the 14 million people who’ve gotten a job over the past seven years as we crawled out of the Great Recession.

Google “95 million unemployed” and you’ll find that dozens of right-wing news sites regularly report on and comment on the fact that a record 95 million adults are not in the labor force. We’ve heard it over and over on Fox,CNBC,Breitbart,ZeroHedge, LifeZette,CNS News and many more. You’ll find it on MarketWatch, as well.

This is the perfect fake statistic, because it’s absolutely true. And completely meaningless..

No, Mr. Trump: The unemployment rate isn’t really 42%, and there aren’t 95 million people out of work


The vast majority of people who aren’t in the labor force don’t want or need a job, but don’t tell that to Donald Trump or the right-wing media.
As we consume more and more information through unfiltered internet sites and social-media networks, all of us have become more susceptible to getting fooled by propaganda, which is what people really mean when they talk about the problem of “fake news.”

Follow this fake statistic that the right wing used to trash Obama’s economic recovery - MarketWatch