A Mutual Break-Up (It's not you; it's me, labor force...)

While laying in bed today, enjoying not having to be at school, I read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that focused on September's rise in unemployment. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/02/MNE91A0AHE.DTL&type=business) Yes, shockingly, the rate rose from 9.7% to 9.8%. So .1% more of the United States' labor force has ended September and begun autumn with no job. How many people is that, exactly? How can we humanize that?
To break it down for you, the government's census bureau selects about 60,000 households from across the country that they believe will represent the ginormous population of the entire United States. And they ask them questions about their employment once a month. They usually do this around the 12th of the month, and BAM! By the end of the month, the results are in and the entire nation gets to panic together about how terribly we are doing.
So, the government estimates that the United States' labor force is about 153.1 million workers strong, including the unemployed. If the statistics are accurate, (and the government insists that the chances are 90% that they are within 290,000 people of the actual numbers) then roughly 15 million Americans are without jobs right now. September's .1% rise in unemployment means, then, that approximately153,000 more Americans lost their jobs last month.
But what struck me most about what I read in the Chronicle was that now about 600,000 Americans have given up on finding employment. They've given up on working and are no longer part of the labor force. That's more than the entire population of a forward-thinking and -moving city like Seattle, just giving up on finding work.
I would assume, although it is just an awful thing to do, that these labor force dropouts have done so because they can. Maybe these people are the 16-year-olds across the nation that just feel bad for taking McJobs away from older people that have been laid off and booted from their cubicle with no means to feed their 14-year-olds. Or maybe they're wives or husbands with young children at home who would love to take the opportunity to get to know their families more.
While knowing that I had a very part-time job to come back to once school was back in session made me feel a little less pressure to find a job over the summer, I also knew that my competition was stronger and had much more experience than I have in the work force. I've never had to compete with people in my parents' generation for jobs. And should they have to compete with teenagers that don't need to be home at a certain time to pick their children up from day care? In this land of plenty?

P.S.- big ups to the government for making information about their data-gathering methods available to anyone with an internet connection. Or a blog to write. Check it out for yourselves. http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.pdf