Celebrating dropping out

by digby

Someone sent me an email asking why I wasn’t trumpeting the lower unemployment rate. The fact is that I’d really like to. More people being unemployed would be very welcome. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s happening:

The U.S. job market slowed in March as companies hit the brakes on hiring amid uncertainty about the economy’s growth prospects. The unemployment rate dipped, but mostly because more Americans stopped looking for work. The Labor Department said Friday that the economy added 120,000 jobs in March, down from more than 200,000 in each of the previous three months. The unemployment rate fell to 8.2 percent. The rate has dropped nearly a full percentage point since August and is now at its lowest level since January 2009.”

Maybe most of them are now working in the underground economy or have suddenly won the lottery. I hope so. But until that stops being a major factor in the lower unemployment rate I’m not going to get excited about a statistic that doesn’t count them.

Update: And then, there’s this.