It's not only the labor participation rate, nick.

If somebody is laid-off from their full-time factory job - that pays a decent wage, with benefits - that's the loss of one job.

If that same person picks-up 2 poorly paid service industry jobs - with no benefits - to try to make ends meet, that gets counted as TWO SEPARATE JOBS in the US statistics.

That's recorded as a NET GAIN OF ONE JOB.

This is an example of how the US government twists the data to put lipstick on the pig that is their real economy.

And I seriously doubt that we do anything different in this country...