Labor Lost

Standing in line marking time
Waiting for the welfare dime
'Cause they can't buy a job
--Bruce Hornsby & the Range

Cheerleaders of the positive trend in BLS unemployment numbers ignore serious measurement problems with the series. One of them is it treats a job as a job regardless of quality.

Part time employment as a bartender counts the same as full time employment as an engineer.

Since the so-called 'recovery,' national employment trends that this administration loves to boast about have been goosed by rising underemployment.