U.S. job market really is improving: Millions join workforce

WASHINGTON — It’s standard Republican criticism of President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy. Unemployment has been halved from 10 percent in 2009 to 5 percent today, but that’s mainly because so many people have gotten so discouraged that they’ve just given up looking for work. Factor that in and real joblessness is a lot higher.

But over the past six months the narrative in the jobs market has changed for the better — for Obama and for ordinary Americans. Encouraged by improving employment prospects, more than 2 million people have flooded into the workforce since September, the biggest six-month gain in records going back to 1990, using data adjusted for changes in population estimates. And unemployment has continued to fall, although slightly.

The big question is whether that happy combination can continue. Mary Daly, a senior vice president and job-market expert at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, thinks it can. She sees the labor force participation rate — the share of working-age Americans who are employed or looking for work — rising further as unemployment sinks to about 4.5 percent by the end of 2016.

“As the economy continues to grow and good jobs growth continues, you’ll see workers being drawn back in” to the labor force, Daly said. “That could persist all the way through the end of this year and into early next year.”

Some other economists are less optimistic. Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist for JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, sees the participation rate holding at about 63 percent through the end of this year as joblessness falls another half percentage point.