Friday's jobs report was pretty rough, but actually the unemployment rate dipped to 9.7%. That's because, despite the lack of private sector hiring, a large swath of jobseekers decided to, for whatever reason,
quit the workforce.

As Annaly Capital Management (via PragCap) notes, the civilian labor force fell by 322,000 May.

The spike up in the total flow from those "unemployed" to "not in the labor force" follow what looked like a couple of months worth of the reverse: people moving on net from not in the labor force to the
unemployed, looking segment.

What it looks like is that a lot of frustrated workers were sold on the idea that there was some kind of recovery underway, and then realized they'd been lied to.

Image: Annaly Capital Management