According to the Atlanta Fed in order to have an unemployment rate of 6% at a labor force participation rate of 63.7% by the end of the first quarter of 2016, the economy would need to average an increase of more than 163,000 new jobs per month in payroll employment (CES).
Since that hasn’t been the case in the last 15 years (the last 20 years if, as I do, you consider the dot-com boom an aberration), long before the housing boom and bust, not to mention that the labor force participation rate has been going declining rather than staying the same or increasing for the last few years that suggests that the only way that the unemployment rate will get that low by the end of the next presidential term is to lower the participation rate farther.
If that’s the strategy, I’m not sure why we’d want the unemployment rate to go lower.
