Below is the Employed Rate, it's the percentage of people employed the government considers Employable.
Employable meaning, the people employed, underemployed or unemployed living on the government dollar.
Everyone else that is not employable are still part of the total Employment Population, but are not counted by the government.
As we can see, things seem to be getting better by the Employed Percentage, but that's only part of the story.
The chart below shows the actual data in highlighted line and the Wave Data Average in bold line colors for each Bi-Decade (5 year interval).
The other part of the story is the Employment Participation Rate or Employable Population the government counts when evaluating employment and unemployment numbers.
From the chart below we can see the employable population percentage has been going down since 2008.
When we combine these two charts using the Wave Data Average, we can see how these two values relate to each other; not only between them, but also in Time.
The chart below has arrows indicating the direction of time the line is traveling in addition to the relationship between the two values.
We can see the current direction is not good.
When the Employed Percentage falls and the Employable Percentage remains constant, it's fairly normal.
It means people are loosing jobs, but they're still part of the employable status counted by the government; just unemployed.
When the Employed Percentage rises and the Employable Percentage remains constant, this too is fairly normal.
It means people are finding jobs, the economy is moving forward.
When the Employed Percentage rises and the Employable Percentage decreases, now there's a problem.
This is a false indicator; it means the people that were once considered employable are not anymore by the government.
The employable percentage decreasing can have the effect of driving the employed percentage up even though actual employment isn't going up significantly like it does in a real economic rise.
Simple fact is, anyone touting employment numbers is Bunk.
When we see the line going up and to the right, then we can say there is a real economic recovery going on.