The economy only added 120,000 jobs in March. Another 164,000 abandon the labor force.

Unemployment dropped in March to 8.2% from 8.3%. The reason wasn't the anemic job growth in March.  Another 164,000 left the labor force.

Via HotAir:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate dropped to 8.2% from 8.3% last month, and the broader U-6 unemployment/underemployment rate dropped to 14.5% from 14.9%, while the economy added only 120,000 jobs overall and 121,000 jobs added in the private sector. According to Fox Business, the consensus among economists was for the unemployment rate to remain at 8.3% and for 203,000 jobs to be added, based on ADP’s estimate of 209,000 new private-sector jobs and Gallup’s mid-March unadusted unemployment rate drop of 0.3 percentage points.

To flip the question Ed asked last month, how did the unemployment rate drop when job growth was anemic? It’s a muddled mixture of good news and bad news. While the number of unemployed (at least those who had looked for work between mid-February and mid-March) dropped by 133,000 to 12,673,000 and the number of those not in the labor force but wanting a job dropped by 79,000 to 6,299,00 the number of those in the labor force fell by 164,000 to 154,707,0000. Moreover, on a seasonally-unadjusted basis, the number of those forced to part-time work due to economic conditions fell from 8,100,000 to 7,700,000.

No. The people leaving the labor force did not retire.

Rasmussen:

After holding steady for the past year, the number of Americans who know someone who’s given up looking for a job out of frustration with the current market is up to 48%.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 43% of Adults don’t know someone in this situation. But the number of Americans who know someone who has given up on the job market is up from 43% in February and ties the highest result measured in regular tracking since 2010. This finding hovered around 40% for most of 2011.