The treacherous labour statistics

Employment did not exp­and to absorb the unemplo­yed in January. On the contr­ary, it shrank by 3.3 million

The unemployment rate fell in January 2022. It was a significant fall of 1.3 percentage points — from a rather menacing 7.9 per cent in December 2021 to a somewhat meeker 6.6 per cent in January 2022. The number of unemployed people fell by a hefty 6.6 mi­l­­lion. This sounds very good. But, there is a twist. The fall in the unemployment rate did not arise out of more people getting jobs. The 6.6 million drop in the count of unemployed does not mean that 6.6 million more jobs were created to employ them. They, rather disappointingly, just stopped looking