Was The October Jobs Report Really Good News?

See October surprise: Job gains soar to 204,000. It seems like most news reports said that the 200,000 added jobs was good news in view of the government shutdown. But the percent of the adult population that had a job actually fell from 58.6% in September to 58.3% in October. See Employment status of the civilian noninstitutional population 16 years and over, 1978 to date. The labor force participation rate also fell from 63.2% to 62.8%.

For all of 2007, the percent of the adult population that had a job was  63.0% (the recession started in December of 2007). Here are the percentages since 2007

2007	63.0
2008	62.2
2009	59.3
2010	58.5
2011	58.4
2012	58.6

The percentage was at least 60 for every year from 1985-2008. It was at least 62% every year from 1994-2008. So far this year, the average monthly percentage has been 58.58%. So compared to recent history, we have a long way to go. And 2013 probably won't be any better than 2012.