Why 4.9% unemployment doesn't feel great

If there's a half-truth to what Trump is saying, it's this: There's no doubt that the jobs situation has improved substantially since the Great Recession when unemployment peaked at 10%. But the reason 4.9% unemployment doesn't feel so great is because the labor force participation is at its lowest point since the 1970s.

Just 62.8% of adult Americans are working today. That's down a lot from early 2008, when over 66% of adult Americans had jobs or were searching actively for work.

Many experts have examined the reasons behind this drop. The consensus is that much of the decline was inevitable as Baby Boomers retire and more young Americans stay in school longer to get college and graduate degrees. Trump doesn't like to talk about that.

That said, about 25% of the decline in labor force participation isn't explained by demographics or the usual economic cycle effects, according to a White House Council of Economic Advisors report. To put that another way, about 2 million Americans fall into that unexplained category.

In the past, these people would likely have been working. Now, they're not. Maybe they've became discouraged after not being able to find a job, or they didn't feel the job opportunities out there were good enough for them. It's also possible some are traveling the world or staying home because they want to.

It doesn't mean unemployment rate is wrong. The BLS is also the organization that calculates the labor force participation rate (as well as various "alternative unemployment rates" that Bernie Sanders likes to reference).

The BLS isn't trying to hide or tinker with the numbers. The BLS presents many different metrics so the public, and politicians, can see them and debate what to do.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/11/news/economy/donald-trump-unemployment-hoax/index.html?iid=hp-stack-dom

The whole economic system is in a "managed" decline.  No children=no growth.  With the rapidly aging population things should go sideways for an extended period.