User talk:66.128.253.147

The section on unemployment rate during President Obama's administration is highly misleading. While the rate did decline it was not due to fewer people being unemployed but instead it was because of a significant increase in those people who became so frustrated that they ceased to look for work. This is evidenced by the the US Department of Labor's Statistics measure of Labor Participation Rate.

To understand the unemployment rate you must understand how it is calculated. Unemployment is calculated by taking the number of unemployed individuals actively seeking employment divided by the total employed workforce + those unemployed actively seeking employment. The Labor Participation Rate is the total number of people currently working + those unemployed actively seeking employment divided by the total working age population.

Per the US Department of Labor Statistics the unemployment rate as of December 2008 was 7.3% and in December 2016 it was 4.7% for a decline of 2.6%. However the Labor Participation Rate in December 2008 was 65.8%, (consistent with the rate for the previous 18 years which ranged between 66 and 67%) while in December 2016 it was 62.7% for a decline of 3.1%. As a result, the decline in the unemployment rate was more than accounted for by unemployed who just gave up looking for a job out of frustration, (as measured by the decline in the Labor Participation Rate). It did not reflect improved economic conditions with a resulting increase in job creation in excess of population growth. In fact the real unemployment rate, (unemployment rate assuming no change in Labor Participation Rate) actually grew from December 2008 to December 2016 by 0.4% from 7.3% to 7.7%. The math is very straight forward.

While there have been significant economic contractions in the past,in most cases the free market was able to recover reasonably quickly. In fact one has to go back to Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression to find another time when the real unemployment rate remained above 7% for 8 consecutive years. Coincidentally the period of President Obama's administration from 2008 to 2016 reflected a period of government interference with the free market that was only matched by the 1930s Roosevelt years. Kelsaw (talk) 00:36, 1 June 2018 (UTC) Kelsaw