When President Obama took office, the official unemployment rate was about 7.8 percent, the same as now. So at least unemployment hasn’t gotten any worse, right?

Wrong! What happened is that the labor participation rate (LPI) dropped. The LPI is the percentage of “civilian noninstitutional population” (basically, working-age people) who are in the labor force, i.e., either working or looking for work. It is down, because so many Americans gave up looking for work.

If the same percentage of working-age Americans were still in the labor force now as there were when Obama took office, the official unemployment rate would be calculated as 10.7 percent rather than 7.8 percent.

That’s right: 10.7 percent unemployment, after more than three years of so-called recovery. (And here in North Carolina it’s even worse.)

The difference is the more than 5 million additional Americans who gave up looking for work.

It is unbelievable to me that Obama was actually running ads boasting of his record of job creation. Does he really think that American voters are that gullible?

Dave Burton

Cary