Bruce Jenket: Workforce participation rate the true indicator of economic health

To The Daily Sun,

A recent letter to the editor by Jay Newton, “Republicans have refused to allow minimum wage to keep up with inflation,” was so riddled with false assumptions, it deserves rebuttal.

His biggest misconception is that low unemployment is an indicator of economic health. Democrats and Republicans toss that number out when it suits their current narrative. What it measures is what percentage of potential workers are getting paid to not work. States regulate how long they will support that, and here in New Hampshire it’s 26 weeks. Unemployment is low now because many non-workers exceeded their state limits.

The real measure of economic health is workforce participation rate (WFPR) (https://tinyurl.com/yckbrsjc) and it took its biggest hit during the Barack Obama administration, dropping from 66.2% in 2008 to 62.7% in 2016. To put that into perspective, a reduction in WFPR of 3.5% in a population of 330 million people is 11.5 million fewer workers. To be fully transparent, that number is probably closer to 8 million because WFPR rate is based on citizens over the age of 16.

By comparison, under President Donald Trump the WFPR increased from the inherited 62.7% to 63.4% in 2020 and then COVID dropped the WFPR to 60.2% in 2 months.

Another misrepresentation in Newton's alternate reality is that President Joe Biden resuscitated the economy with the COVID-19 vaccine. FYI, the vaccine was developed under Trump’s Operation Warp Speed and inherited by Biden. The Biden administration further damaged the WFPR by firing healthy workers if they refused the shot. WFPR is 62.4% today! That’s still 1% lower than before COVID.

Newton's letter has other CNN misinformation but 300 words is not enough to address. If he wants to debate the facts, I would be willing to do that. Meanwhile, vote Republican in November.

Bruce Jenket

Moultonborough