Yesterday Jim Geraghty posted an article at National Review Online about the unemployment numbers released this week and the media’s celebration that unemployment is going down.

This is the chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

As you can see, the civilian labor force is not increasing.  In January 2006, there were 150,214,000 Americans in the labor force. In December 2008, there were 154,626,000 Americans in the labor force. That is an increase of 4,412,000.

The article reports:

We’re still down 349,000 from the size of the labor force when Obama’s term began. The labor force hit its lowest point during that time in January 2011, at 153,250,000.

The economy may actually improve slightly this year, and the economy should not be the only issue in deciding who to support in November’s election. There are other issues (some of which affect the economy) such as national defense, Obamacare, government spending, tax policies, and over-regulation.. This will be an important election, we owe it to ourselves to consider carefully how we vote.