>How did USA unemployment decrease by 0,2% if no jobs were created.
>In a country with an active population of 170M, there wouldnZt be
>necessary to create 340,000 jobs to decrease unemployment by 0,2%?
>Or is it an artificial effect of people leaving the workforce (and
>in this case unemployment rate would be a meaningless measurement?)
>But the discouraged people, according to BLS, didnZt change from
>last year. And why overall civilian workforce is not increasing
>if the population is obviously doing so?????
The jobs count comes from a survey of employers, and the unemployment rate froma survey of households, so they're not strictly comparable. But the reason the U rate declined is that the jobless dropped out of the labor force. The number of people classed as "not in the labor force" rose by 538,000.
The unemployment rate isn't meaningless to employers. If people are only "marginally attached," as the jargon goes, then they're not really in the reserve army, and therefore mostly out of the picture when it comes to the looseness or slackness of the labor market.
Doug