According to Friday’s jobs report, the headline number, the unemployment rate, dropped a skosh to 6.1%. But there’s more to it than that.

• the long-term unemployed dropped to 3 million, but they’re still over 30% of all of US unemployed
• the employment-population ratio was 59% for the third consecutive month

and

• the civilian noninstitutional population was 248,229,000, up 206,000 from July, but
• the civilian labor force was 155,959,000, down 64,000 from July

Then there’re these data:

• nonfarm employment was up 142,000, against economists’ expectations of an increase of around 225,000 jobs
• revisions to earlier estimates for June and July showed that the economy added 28,000 fewer jobs than initially reported
• government figures still offer little evidence that workers are seeing higher wages or that people who left the labor force during the recession are returning in large numbers
• the measure of unemployment that includes those working part-time but who would like full-time jobs remained at/above 12%

And

• labor-force participation rate dropped to 62.8% to reach, again, 40-year lows

Now think again about those economic “gains” about which our Progressive President bragged just a bit ago.