> You offer no reason to believe that the absolute size of the population outside of the labor force is a more relevant measure than any of the official labor f

> You offer no reason to believe that the absolute size of the population outside of the labor force is a more relevant measure than any of the official labor force underutilization measures for the claim about unemployment. If I understand that sentence correctly, you're putting words in my mouth. I never said it was a more relevant by itself, I said it needs to be factored in. It should be factored in because if people give up looking for work, that isn't a sign of a strong economy. > Well, first, its 4.9% today (well, June 2016, the most recent month for which numbers are available), and 9.6% is not more than double 4.9%. You are correct, I misspoke. I meant compared to the final unemployment report for which the CLSA studied, not today since today had not happened yet when their study was conducted. Fixed. > Second, even if it were more appropriate to compare employment on a constant-participation-rate basis (for which you have presented no argument), 9.6% on 66% labor force participation rate (what is used as the pre-crisis rate in your source) would still be an improvement over Obama's term, since unemployment was at 9.8% the month Obama took office (considerably post-crisis), with a 65.7% LFPP (which would about 10.1% on a 66% participation rate.) With the suggested metric factored in, you can clearly see there has not been an improvement between 2009 and the end of the study. Here is the graph again: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user51698/imageroot/2016/06/11/20160611_clsaunemploymentrate.JPG http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5169...