Ignore The Participation Rate Naysayers

        8:51 EDT - The temptation will be to write off at the 6.3% unemployment rate as an aberration related to participation rate's plunge to 62.8% from 63.2%. It's as if all these folks dropped out of the labor force at precisely the wrong moment, ensuring that those 282,000 new jobs had even bigger effect on the unemployment rate. But we really should take good news for what it is. The rate of job creation was almost twice that of workforce departure. And, in any case, this are voluntary withdrawals from the job hunt. They are sound statistical reasons for not including them in the unemployment denominator. (michael.casey@wsj.com)
        (END) Dow Jones Newswires

        May 02, 2014 08:51 ET (12:51 GMT)