The Unemployment Report Wasn’t Rigged, But It’s Not Accurate, Either

On Oct. 5, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the official unemployment rate had dropped from 8.1% to 7.8% — a surprisingly sharp decline given the slow pace of growth in the U.S. economy. The reaction from many on the right was incredulity, with some even suggesting that political appointees in the Obama Administration had tampered with the Labor Department’s report to give the President a political boost in the final weeks of the election. Although these conspiracy theorists were dismissed by pundits on both the left and the right, that’s where agreement on the report ended. Conservatives have long argued that the official unemployment rate understates the sluggishness of the economy and that much of the decline in the rate is a result of people giving up their job searches and dropping out of the labor force entirely. Supporters of the President say the decline in the number of workers in the labor force is caused by the aging of the workforce — as our nation gets older, there will naturally be a larger portion of the population that is retired.

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