Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about the jobs numbers just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The news that you will probably hear Democrats talk about is that the unemployment rate has gone down to 8.1 percent. Obviously that number is nothing to brag about, but at least it went down. But when you take a look at the numbers that are part of that number, unemployment is a problem.

The article mentions that the workforce shrank by 368,000.

CNBC reported:

But job reports for June and July were revised lower. The June count fell from 64,000 to 45,000, while July’s number came in at 141,000 from an originally reported 163,000.

Despite hopes that job creation would be better than expected, the monthly report fell short of economist expectations that 125,000 jobs were added for the month. The government said private payrolls increased by 103,000, about half the 201,000 that ADP reported Thursday.

The article at Hot Air explains that the decline in unemployment was due to people leaving the workforce. The employment-population rate in August was 58.3 percent.

The article at Hot Air points out:

That’s a new 30-year low in the civilian participation rate, lower than April’s 63.6%.  That’s the reason for the decline in the jobless rate.  The workforce decline artificially depresses the official unemployment rate.  If we had the same level of civilian participation as we did at the beginning of the recovery in June 2009 (65.7%), we’d be looking at a jobless rate of well over 10%.  The employment-population ratio dropped to 58.3% in August, not as low as last year’s 58.2%, but still bouncing along a generational bottom.  That measure was 59.4% at the beginning of the recovery.

There is talk of another quantitative easing (it would be QE3) by the government, but considering that QE1 and QE2 were not overly popular, it is questionable whether this will happen.

There is a political class in Washington that wants to remain in power–it includes both Congress and the Executive branches of government. There have been a few cracks made in that power by the Tea Party, but it remains to be seen if they will be corrupted by their new acquisition of power. If the Tea Party is not corrupted by Washington, they will provide the only hope to turn this mess around. Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see what those currently in power are willing to do to the economy to get themselves re-elected.