I'm just eating something and fucking around on GFY before I go to the gym. But here is what I found real quick:
"April 2009, the specific number was 154,731,000 in the civilian workforce. There are also approximately 1,500,000 in the military workforce."
I can't find the exact numbers for 2012 with a quick search on Google. But I did find the exact numbers of new jobs and people who LEFT the workforce: There were 114,000 NEW jobs created this month. BUT...342,000 people LEFT the workforce!
So the unemployment numbers "see" that as the unemployment rate getting better by 456,000 ! That's how the rate "dropped"
But there were not 456,000 new jobs created.
Only 114,000
And you have to create 200,000 actual new jobs every month to keep up with population growth.
I'm sure that over the next few days we will see the actual number of people that are in the workforce posted as the numbers get analyzed and posted.