Only 20K Jobs Created In Feb. (Unemployment Rate Drops)

The Labor Department has released their statistics for February. The most shocking statistic was that only 20,000 jobs were created in the month (not even coming close to the 180,000 that were expected). Equally perplexing was that the unemployment rate fell by 0.02 points in spite of the extremely weak job creation. How could this happen.

It happened because the Labor Department lowered the number of officially unemployed workers -- moving nearly 200k out of the unemployed category and into the marginally-attached category (because they had not looked for work in the last four weeks). These people are still unemployed -- they are just no longer counted as unemployed by the Labor Department. Also, the size of the civilian work force dropped by 45k.

Here are the relevant statistics for February:

SIZE OF THE CIVILIAN WORK FORCE:

163,184,000

OFFICIAL NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS:

6,235,000

OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:

3.8%

DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN OF OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT:

Adult men...............3.5%
Adult women...............3.4%
Teenagers (16-19)...............13.4%
Whites...............3.3%
Blacks...............7.0%
Hispanics...............4.3%
Asians...............3.1%
Less than HS diploma...............5.3%
HS graduate...............3.8%
Some college...............3.2%
Bachelor's deg. or more...............2.2%

UNEMPLOYED BUT NOT COUNTED (Marginally-attached):

1,424,000

MORE REALISTIC NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS:

7,659,000

MORE REALISTIC UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:

4.7%