My guess, unless there is fraud being committed, is that this is the beginning of the "baby-boomer" withdrawal from the workforce. The next set of figures should clarify if this is so.
| My guess is early retirements and two-income households rediscovering, by necessity, the advantages of having a stay-at-home houseperson. |
While today's unemployment number came at a low 9.4%, well below expectations, the one and only reason for this is that the labor force in America has plunged to a fresh 25 year low. Assuming a reversion to the mean in the long-term average participation rate back to 66%, means that the civilian labor force, which in December came at 153,690, a drop of 260,000 from November, is in reality 157.6 million, a delta of 3.91 million currently unaccounted for. Maybe someone can ask Bernanke during his imminent presentation before Congress what happened to the unemployed population, which would have been 18.4 million if this labor force delta was incorporated, resulting in an unemployment rate of 11.7%. |