The August jobs report is out and getting lots of headlines, but as is too often the case the headlines don’t really tell the story.

Right off the bat, let me criticize the “no jobs” claims so common in headlines - it’s just wrong. There are always new jobs being created. The accurate claim is that there were almost no new net jobs when private and public employment figures are added together.

Even with the loss of 45,000 Verizon jobs, the net employment in the private sector grew by 17,000 thousand jobs, a small number to be sure. Yet those 45,000 are now back to work.

Employment grew in mining, health care, and professional services.

Manufacturing employment was little changed with a slight loss.

The big loss in jobs? Why, it was government jobs. So, why isn’t the American atavistic right wing, aka the contemporary GOP, bragging about these jobs reports as a kind of victory, if indeed government is the enemy that they claim?

Put simply - government employment is employment and thus the loss of these jobs adds to the unemployed figure. Quoting the BLS report:

Since employment peaked in September 2008, local government has lost 550,000 jobs.

The BLS also revised (as is often the case) down the net jobs gains for July and June.

Anyway, beyond all of that, this jobs report reinforces some long term trends that get ignored by all except the economics wonks but yet the numbers reveal what is truly happening in the US.

For this let me turn to the CalculateRisk blog, which does some of the nicer graphs on these matters. In their take on todays BLS report:

[…]

The Labor Force Participation Rate increased to 64.0% in August (blue line). This is the percentage of the working age population in the labor force. The participation rate is well below the 66% to 67% rate that was normal over the last 20 years, although some of the decline is due to the aging population.

The Employment-Population ratio increased to 58.2% in August (black line).

[…]

CalculatedRisk provides an informative graph overlaying Labor Force Participation Rate with recessions and unemployment. As you can see, the Participation Rate has been falling since 2000.

So, this raises two questions:

1) Is the current high unemployment rate and slow net increase in job count (e.g., the current BLS report) phenomena that are being controlled more by the long term changes than the short term business cycle (i.e. recession)?

2) Is decreasing Participation Rate a bad thing?

Now, I don’t expect these questions to make it into the next GOP Presidential candidate “debate”, but they ought to be there.

It has become far too easy - indeed, it’s a religious mantra - to whine about jobs reports and jump up and down and say that President XYZ has to do something.

My claim - no, Mr. President doesn’t have to do something.

Governments by nature do many things. Yet in a representative democracy like ours the government reflects the larger social makeup (more or less, sometimes less) of the country.

We have gone through many changes since WWII. The most significant IMO is the change in the household makeup. IT USED TO BE NORMAL for a woman to stay home, i.e., not to have a full time job outside of homemaking (though part time sources of additional income were always possible.)

Then that changed.

And the Labor Force Participation Rate increased significantly. It peaked in the year 2000.

These are subjects for a greater discussion, about how American society has changed and is changing. Indeed, human angst over change drives many of our discussions, and I propose that the entire Tea Party revanchist orgy of the past few years is just that - angst over changes in society that are beyond, far beyond, what any political office, even President of the United States, can or should control.