U.S. unemployment rate falls to pandemic low of 7.9%, but that's not the whole story

[Demovictory9]

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The unemployment rate has shrunk from a modern record high of 14.7% during the worst stages of the coronavirus pandemic to just under 8% in September, but the rapid plunge is not nearly as good as it looks. Not by a longshot.

The jobless rate fell for the fifth month in a row, to 7.9% from 8.4%, the government said Friday. Good news, right? Yes, but it comes with a lot of caveats.

First and foremost, nearly 700,000 people stopped looking for scarce jobs and dropped out of the labor force in September. As such they aren’t counted in the unemployment rate.

More broadly, the size of the labor force dropped to 160.1 million last month from 164.5 million in February, the last month before the viral outbreak in the U.S. That means 4.4 million people have basically fallen off the map.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-unemployment-rate-falls-to-pandemic-low-of-79-but-thats-not-the-whole-story-2020-10-02

[Sherman A1]

1. A whole lot of those jobs

Are never coming back.

[elias7]

2. So with early retirements that would have lost the job, that corrects up to 10.3%