Unemployment Mystery Solved? As Jobless Benefits Expire, More Seeking Part-Time Work
Put simply: take 100,000 new and newly-discovered government jobs, add a modest 100,000 private sector jobs, then--crucially--add 600,000 part-time jobs taken by people suddenly losing their federal extended unemployment benefits, and you suddenly have a near-complete explanation of how the unemployment rate fell dramatically in a near-recession economy. It's not that the economy is better--far from it, and not just that government is spinning the data--though it is: it's simply that federal cash is running out, and incentives matter.