The March unemployment rate remained the same, yet once again the BLS survey showed another huge increase in those not considered part of the labor force anymore and as a result the figure hit a record 93.175 million high. The official unemployment rate is 5.5%. The labor participation rate is also 62.7% and remains at 37 year record lows. From a year ago, the number of people considered not in the labor force has increased by over two million.
This article overviews and graphs the statistics from the Employment report Household Survey also known as CPS, orcurrent population survey. The CPS survey tells us about people employed, not employed, looking for work and not counted at all. The household survey has large swings on a monthly basis as well as a large margin of sampling error. The CPS has severe limitations, yet, it is our only real insight into what the overall population are doing for work.
Those employed grew by only 34,000 this month. This is within the margin of error of the survey. From a year ago, the employed has increased by 2.535 million. This is beyond what is needed to keep up with increased population growth.