I remember all too well my refrain in the fall of 2008: "It’s all about JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!"
We created 192,000 headline jobs in the February employment report. It’s not enough, but it certainly is welcome news and it is heading in the right direction — although too slowly.
We also learned from the February report that the unemployment rate finally trended below the psychologically important 9 percent mark. This is a very big development, considering the rate was pushing the 10 percent level several months ago.
Upon closer scrutiny though, there is another factor contributing to the drop that is not necessarily good news: The official size of the U.S. labor force is shrinking.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the “Labor Force Participation Rate” each month, along with a litany of other metrics that are used to give us the headline jobs number and the unemployment rate.