Between December 2009 and December 2011, US GDP increased by about 4.7%.
At the same time total US employment only increased by 1.1%, from 139,220,000 to 140,790,000.
And while a modest increase in the number of full-time and part-time jobs accounted for a modest decline in the official calculation of unemployment, meanwhile back in reality…
The modest increase of 1,570,000 jobs didn’t even cover the increase in “civilian noninstitutional population,” 16 and over, which rose by 1,695,000, from 238,889,000 to 240,584,000.
But most of this increase in our 16-and-over population was simply wished away by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which only added 274,000 of them (about 15%) into the “civilian labor force,” which accordingly only rose from 153,613,000 to 153,887,000, as if 85% of this slice of our working-age population was mysteriously “unavailable for work.”
And of course median household income continued to decline, so…
Unless you’re one of the very lucky very few, all those rosy headlines about declining unemployment and increasing GDP won’t mean much of anything for you.
