I'm sure NPR just means white employment. Black employment is still probably 9% or worse.

Can I just remark on the asinine habit of Strange bloggers to "prove" points they are making by linking back to other articles they posted where they just made stuff up?

Is it just a way to trick readers into thinking you know what you are talking about, or is it just a complete lack of awareness?

@1:

Pretty sure that's an average rate covering all workers, regardless of race. Additionally, the U-6 rate, which includes both people who have either stopped looking for work or who are only employed part-time but seeking full-time employment, also fell to its lowest level since 2008. If you want to break it down by demographics, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows Black unemployment running at a seasonally-adjusted rate of 8.1% last month, a full half percentage point drop from October.

Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over. Back to Republican unemployment, market crashes and terrorist attacks.

Unemployment is at 4.6%. But I thought the country was falling apart?

But as we all know, according to Fox News and the rightwing Trolls, the real unemployment rate is like 11-19% because you can't trust Obama's and the BLS reporting numbers and you know people stop collecting unemployment and looking for work and...

That is until of course there is a Republican in office. Then when unemployment invariably rises under Republican trickle down to 9-12%... well, you can't trust THOSE numbers because... it's really... lower... like 2% or something... because... I DON'T KNOW! STOP ASKING QUESTIONS! WELFARE QUEENS! LIBERALS ARE SCAMMING THE SYSTEM! Etc.

Since President Twitter Troll is such a huge Putin fan, I read up on the performance of the Russian economy over the last few years for a preview of what we can look forward to, and it's exactly what you'd expect: Continuous asset bubbles followed by grueling crises, corrupt privitization and deregulation schemes that auction off public assets to crony oligarchs for absurd discounts, and 110 individual billionaires owning 35% of all financial assets in a nation of 146 million people.

Yes, the hate-crazed Trump voters are gonna be totally eviscerated in the upcoming, buckwild kleptocracy, however they'll be screaming their "heil Trumps" all the way into their post-apocalyptic shanty towns.

Over 63% of the population older than 16 was employed in 2007. Today, the employment ratio is below 60%, ~1.5 point greater than it was at the bottom of the recession so there are plenty of people (~8 million) who never found a job again (imagine how pissed they could be) or never entered the labor force. To conclude that the employment situation is the same is a gross misrepresentation of reality.

@7:

Regrettably, many already live in severely economically depressed parts of the country, albeit not quite at a post-apocalyptic level, so even if things tank in pretty much the same way they did back in '08, it's not going to make that much difference to them, except to the extent they'll be forced to acknowledge their hoped-for living-wage jobs are NEVER coming back, at which point I imagine many will simply shrug in resignation thinking to themselves, "Oh well, at least we tried." OTOH, they WILL have the brief satisfaction of watching large swathes of their fellow citizens dragged down closer to their own level, which I rather suspect is really the best they can hope for, because nothing feels quite so good as exacting your revenge by making your enemy as miserable as you are.

@8 -- The population is older, though, which means some of those people who aren't working are happily retired. How does that factor into your numbers?

It's not like things were great in 2007 (or any period under Bush). Things were great in the late 90s, the greatest period of economic prosperity for Americans ever. Because unlike the 50s, things were pretty good for people of color and women.

But what isn't clear is whether things aren't so good now in certain regions, while outstanding in others. This could easily explain the results of the election. The country as a whole is doing well, which is why the party in power won most of the votes. But in key areas (the so called rust belt) things are not going well at all, and they are suffering what is essentially a recession. We'll know more as more data emerges, but my guess is this election will be just another run of the mill "economy is bad, party in charge loses" election.

@ 9, He's a fascist bully that 'says what they're thinking,' which apparently is all that matters.

@8:

The drop in the participation rate can be accounted for in large party because huge numbers of baby boomers have been retiring in the past six or seven years; currently, less than 1/3 of those now over the age of 67 are still active in the work force. Although their retirement ages trend about the same as pre-Boomers, there are a lot more of them than in previous generations, so that skews the participation rate, because they're dropping out of the workforce at a higher rate than younger workers (for example, Millenials, most of whom are already part of the workforce) are joining it.

@12, some of those baby boomers close to retirement age after getting laid off during the crash probably had trouble getting back in the work force due to age discrimination, so they either prematurely retired or accepted part time or contract work.

@12:

Entirely likely, but the point is, they're RETIRED, whether forced by circumstances or done by choice. And there have been a LOT of them retiring since the 2008 melt down.

It's also worth noting that the Labor Participation Rate has been on a slow, steady decline since about 2000 due to several factors, of which retiring boomers is just one, but which also takes into consideration the reduction in the number of women entering the workforce over that same period, as well as the fact that more young people of the Millenial Generation (which now officially surpasses the Baby Boom Generation in terms of size) are going to college instead of entering the workforce directly out of high school.

Sorry, meant for @13...

@10 & 14 I hadn't thought about the difference in rates of those leaving versus entering the workforce and I agree that it is likely significant. Whether it accounts for the 3% drop in employment rates since 2007 I don't know, but new jobs created during the recovery have barely offset population growth so the jobs lost during the recession were probably never recovered. People being forced into retirement when most have nothing to retire on, as shown by the fact that many choose to retire older than before, still produces lots of malcontents. It is also likely that fewer women and youth entering the workforce is largely due to the lack of well paid jobs.

The question is, do the jobs meet people's needs?

Do they pay enough to provide a decent standard of living? Do they come with benefits, and sick leave? Vacation and maternity leave?

Or are they mere wage slavery?

Good Evening Charles,
I just read this article on the myth of the Obama Recovery:

http://nypost.com/2016/12/07/dont-buy-th…

I don't doubt UR is down. But what greatly concerns me is what are the types of jobs the masses are actually getting (service etc.?) and how much of the workforce is just diminishing .
The economy is still greatly problematic. I believe the Presidential election proved that.