The jobless recovery is now a job-loser

Of course, Team Obama is touting the plus side of today's news, that the unemployment rate is down to 6.3 percent. The down side, of course, he'll ignore.

And, that's that 800,000 new people who left the work force. Per this NYT blog, as far as people in the workforce, we as a country have given up all the labor participation gains made since the start of this year.

Well, maybe that's not the down side.

Maybe it's that wages stayed flat, even with declining unemployment AND fewer workers in the job force.

Or maybe it's that wages stayed flat and people left the economy even as Wall Street set new records.

Much more than than the relatively mild Poppy Bush recession or the moderate Shrub Bush recession, even more than the Carter-Reagan double dip recession, the Great Recession's recovery is hollow indeed.

Now, monthly unemployment numbers are always subject to revision. But these are serious issues that "revision" won't totally cover up.

Add to that the fact that unemployment filings also jumped, and the drop in unemployment rate is obviously camouflaging a lot of ongoing weakness.

And, just figuring out "why" is only one step. Related to that, Gallup says this is part of a larger mixed bag, albeit with generally slightly declining trends.

Whether Dear Leader actually gets his hands dirty on trying to change that "why" is another. Ditto on the Federal Reserve doing anything besides further phasing back on its "quantitative easing."