You have hit on the greatest deception of all the employment figures since Mr. Obama took office. None of the figures published take into account the people that have gotten so discouraged at their long time unemployment that they have literally dropped out of the workforce completely. In January 2012 the US set a new record with 1.2 million dropping out of the workforce completely. Yes, that was 1 month. With those numbers, the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7%
The numbers published by Mr. Obama's BLS are fraudulent at best. Recovery indeed.
Fraudulent?
You sir, are an uninformed idiot. Let me educate you.
Unemployment rate is calculated by taking unemployed workers/Total Labor Force.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics
also calculates six alternate measures of unemployment, U1 through U6, that measure different aspects of unemployment:[41]
U1:[42] Percentage of labor force unemployed 15 weeks or longer.
U2: Percentage of labor force who lost jobs or completed temporary work.
U3: Official unemployment rate per the ILO definition occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively looked for work within the past four weeks.[1]
U4: U3 + "discouraged workers", or those who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions make them believe that no work is available for them.
U5: U4 + other "marginally attached workers", or "loosely attached workers", or those who "would like" and are able to work, but have not looked for work recently.
U6: U5 + Part-time workers who want to work full-time, but cannot due to economic reasons (underemployment).
These alternate measures are available for any uninformed idiot to use. For example a more informed poster on this forum might select the U6 calculation, and use it to buttress his position, instead of posting meaningless gibberish. The base unemployment rate is most commonly referenced by the media, economists, and the president because the Labor department has been tracking that rate for over 60 years. That allows you to do useful things like graph long term trends or make meaningful comparisons to prior years. Like this....