The unemployment rate fell from 10.2% to 10% today, as employers cut fewer jobs than expected in November. The media and left-wing will jump on this as proof that their policies are working. And they’d be right, right?

Not so fast. The unemployment rate measures the percentage of the workforce out of work — not the percentage of the country out of work. What happens when the unemployed simply stop looking for work out of total discouragement? They drop out of the workforce. As they’re no longer unemployed workers looking for employment but rather stay-at-home individuals, they’re not part of the unemployment rate.

So you can have millions of Americans who used to work now staying at home without incomes, and you can simultaneously have a low unemployment rate. If your workforce only has 100 people and 99 of them are employed, your unemployment rate is just 1%.

As the Associated Press notes:

The rate also dropped because fewer people are looking for work. The size of the labor force, which includes the employed and those actively searching for jobs, fell by nearly 100,000, the third straight decline. That indicates more of the unemployed are giving up on looking for work.

The participation rate, or the percentage of the population employed or looking for work, fell to 65 percent, the lowest since the recession began. Once laid-off people stop hunting for jobs, they are no longer counted in the unemployment rate.

This is like saying the number of sick people in your house is down. It’s entirely true, but only because your Aunt Martha died last week. Not exactly fantastic news all around. Obama’s going to lower the unemployment rate by shrinking the American workforce.

More: Hot Air.