Because a person has to be either working or looking for work to be counted as part of the labor force, an increase in the number of people too discouraged to continue their search for work would reduce the unemployment rate, all else being equal - but not for a positive reason.

We're always flexible and pragmatic... It's always important to watch the unemployment rate and to make sure that we can keep most Canadians working. We were successful in that back in 2008-09.

The 1930s had been a time of tremendous economic distress. And the unemployment rate was enormously high by any historic standard.

Whenever you hear news about jobless claims or the unemployment rate, you should translate that in your mind to one simple phrase: Stay in school.

What the mayors care about is, 'How can I get money to invest in the infrastructure in my city? How do we put people back to work, lower the unemployment rate, provide for job training programs? How do we make class sizes smaller and make investments in our children from an education standpoint?'

What happens at the Fed, what Janet Yellen and the other people decide there, what happens in central banks in other parts of the world is very important. This can make the difference between a high unemployment rate, a slow recovery or a more rapid recovery.

Really, the potential for, first of all, any college graduate today is enormously good. These are good times for anyone with a college degree today, particularly African Americans. With a college degree today, you really breach the unemployment rate.

Of course you've got a low unemployment rate when people have got to work two and three jobs just to make ends meet.

San Diego is living proof that a healthy economy, low unemployment rate and strong international ties are not mutually exclusive.

What women care about are jobs, the economy, the unemployment rate.

The unemployment rate is not real.

The voters in Wisconsin elected me last year for the third time because they wanted someone who aimed high, not aimed low. Before I came in, the unemployment rate was over eight percent. It's now down to 4.6 percent.

Ultimately, your economy has to be measured in the real eyes of real people, not simply in statistics that appear in newspapers about the unemployment rate and so forth.

After a generation of misrule under Mr. Hussein, who built a huge military infrastructure while neglecting civilian investment, and a dozen years of United Nations sanctions, Iraq's unemployment rate tops 50 percent.

We know that to compete for the jobs of the 21st century and thrive in a global economy, we need a growing, skilled and educated workforce, particularly in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math. Americans with bachelor's degrees have half the unemployment rate of those with a high school degree.

The basic idea that if you increase government spending or you cut people's taxes that stimulates the economy and lowers the unemployment rate, is a very widely accepted idea. It's in every economics textbook, that's what we teach our undergraduates, and I certainly try to teach them the truth.

Many counties in Maryland are above the average unemployment rate for both Maryland and the United States. We need representation in Congress who will make creating jobs the No. 1 priority so the people of Maryland can get back to work.

People aren't stupid. I mean, people remember in 1990, the unemployment rate was 10 percent. Now it's 4 _ percent. We've got 1/4 million jobs that we've created.

We've set aside tens of millions of acres of those northwestern forests for perpetuity. The unemployment rate has gone not up, but down. The economy has gone up.

The unemployment rate has effectively not gone down from where it was at the peak of the recession. The only reason it's gone technically from 10 percent to 8 percent is so many people are discouraged and have quit work.