redmensch:

friendly reminder that unemployment does not measure how many people are unemployed, it measures how many are unemployed and still considered part of the economy (i.e. actively looking for a job). unemployment is indeed at the lowest it has been (4.1 percent) since it peaked in october 2009 (10 percent), but the labor force participation rate, a more accurate measurement, is at the lowest it has been (62.7 percent) since the crisis began (at 66 percent), and, in fact, since the last recession in the seventies. this means that while 2 million or so jobs were “created” in 2017, approximately
8.5 million people have “left the economy,” in other words, given up on trying to find a job, since the beginning of the crisis. those 8.5 million people are a larger unemployed population than that counted in the unemployment rate, which is made up of 6.6 million people. together, the actual unemployment rate is roughly 9.4 percent, in other words, barely better than it was at the peak of the crisis in october 2009. this is what’s meant by a “jobless recovery”