For those (very few now, with even the Fed admitting the unemployment
rate has become a meaningless, anachronistic relic) still wondering why
the unemployment rate dropped once again, sliding from 5.7% to 5.5%,
the reason is that while the number of unemployed Americans dropped by
274K thousand while those employed rose by 96K, the underlying math is
that the civilian labor force dropped from 157,180 to 157,002 (following
the major revisions posted last month), while the people not in the
labor force rose by 354,000 in February, rising to a record
92,898,000 (people who currently want a job rose to 6,538K) matching the
all time high number of Americans not in the labor force.
End result: the labor force participation rate dropped once more,
declining to only 62.8%, which as the chart below shows is just off the
lowest print recorded since 1978.
Source: BLS