You may remember that back when the November employment figures came out, many speculated that with the direction they had taken, December might actually be the first month with job growth since the onset of the recession. December's figures came out last week, and the good news was that we overshot the estimate: Revisions showed that jobs were added in November, to the tune of 4,000 new jobs across the country.
And that's the end of the good news. The jobless numbers took a turn for the worse in December, when we lost another 85,000 jobs. Unfortunately, that's not the end of the bad news: A bigger problem in December was that an incredible 661,000 persons left the American labor force. The share of the population that is actually in the labor force is now just 64.6 percent, the lowest that figure has been since 1985.
The number of people who have jobs is a more significant figure than the unemployment rate (which, because of all those people leaving the labor force, was unchanged in December). It's not the number of people who don't have jobs that matters; it's the number of people who do have jobs and are contributing to the economy.
The underemployment rate, including part-time workers who want to find a full-time job and people who want work but have given up looking, is now at 17.3 percent. That's the figure to keep an eye on.
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