As reported in the February Employment Situation Summary the Unemployment Rate remained unchanged at 9.7%.  This is interpreted as good news for the economy and the purported recovery.  Further analysis of the data provides perspective.  

• Total nonfarm payroll employment declined 36,000 from January.  Job losses continued in construction and information, while employment continued to increase in temporary help services.  The DOL considers construction and information workers who lose their jobs but find work at temporary help services as employed.

• The number of persons working part time for economic reasons (involuntary part-time workers) increased by 475,000 in one month from 8.3 to 8.8 million.  This impressive increase is ignored by the Unemployment Rate.

• About 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in February, an increase of 476,000 from a year earlier.  These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months.  They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.  (Imagine if they all look for work in March!)

• The number of Discouraged Workers who have given up hope of finding employment increased by 139,000 from January (figures are not seasonally adjusted).

The Unemployment Rate continues to be a preferred metric for assertions of an economic recovery.  But this statistic grossly understates what is transpiring within the economy, the changing disposition of the work force and ignores large numbers of people who have become so discouraged they quit looking.

It is a perversion that the Unemployment Rate is touted as improving when desperate people are forced into part-time positions or become so dejected they stop searching.  The real employment environment continues to erode and no amount of protestations to the contrary will change this reality.