Unemployment Rate vs. Workforce Participation Rate

I suppose the best justification for continuing to base our judgement of our economy on the percentage of unemployment is that it is easier for politicians to hide the truth and easier for the media to communicate.  Unfortunately, being "easy" hardly ever pays off.  Instead of an unemployment rate, we should be asking what is the workforce participation rate?  That is to say, of ALL the people available for work, exactly how many are actually working?  Such a calculation will account for those who have given up looking for jobs, a rather wild variable in the unemployment percentage calculations.  So, if on a simplified approach:  If your total workforce is 100 people and 64 of them are not working, you have a 64% workforce participation rate.  Below is an illustration from Hedge Zero on workforce participation rates:

Wonder why the unemployment rate is at an artificially low 8.9%? Three simple words: Labor Force Participation. At 64.2%, it was unchanged from last month, and continues to be at a 25 year low. Should the LFP return to its 25 trendline average of 66.1%, the unemployment rate would be 11.6%. And indicatively, the Birth/Death adjustment was +112,000.