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Trump says 94 million Americans are out of the labor force — that's true if you include teens and grandma
(Mike Segar/Reuters)
During President Donald Trump's speech to Congress on Tuesday night, the president reflected on the economic and political situation he took over when he entered office.
In doing so, however, Trump repeated a figure that makes the job market sound much worse than it is.
"Tonight, as I outline the next steps we must take as a country, we must honestly acknowledge the circumstances we inherited," Trump said. "Ninety-four million Americans are out of the labor force."
On its face, that is a large number considering that the total US population is just over 320 million people. But consider what the Bureau of Labor Statistics is actually measuring when it counts those 94 million.
The calculation of the labor force uses all civilian Americans over the age of 16. Thus, Trump's seemingly harrowing statistic includes students attending high school or college, retirees, and even those disabled and unable to work.
Trump has previously been criticized for using this figure during his presidential campaign. As far back as 2015, PolitiFact called Trump (and Ted Cruz separately) out for using the number.
At the same time, the job market does have its problems, with the labor-force participation rate at its lowest level in three decades.
(Andy Kiersz/Business Insider)
Additionally, the employment-to-population ratio — the percentage of people over 16 who have a job — is at its lowest since the mid-1980s.
(Andy Kiersz/Business Insider)
These statistics, however, are skewed somewhat by the aging population of the US. An analysis by the President's Council of Economic Advisers attributes roughly half of the postrecession drop in the labor-force participation rate to demographic shifts as baby boomers hit retirement age.
As Trump did also point out, the prime-age employment-to-population ratio, which strips out people under 25 and over 54, is still lower than it was before the recession, but it is recovering more quickly than the broader measure is.
(Andy Kiersz/Business Insider)
Additionally, the headline average hourly wage growth from the monthly US jobs report is still beneath what it was before the recession (though alternative measures like the Atlanta Fed's wage tracker show strong growth). And evidence is mounting that a persistent mismatch has developed between workers' skills and the skills sought by employers.
While the labor force is no doubt facing issues, there is a lot of good news to be had. For one thing, unemployment is near its lowest level since the recession. Even the broader U-6 underemployment measure, which includes discouraged workers and people in part-time jobs who want full-time work, has recovered to near prerecession levels.
(Andy Kiersz/Business Insider)
Add onto that other strong data points: The number of job openings in the US is close to a record high, the US has added over 11 million private-sector jobs since 2008, and the number of people saying they are having trouble finding work in the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence survey is near record lows.
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