Employment "Rate" and the Minimum Wage

[FVZA_Colonel]

I recently entered into a debate on the subject of the recent minimum wage increase with an aquiantance of mine on another forum, who responded to my comment that the previous minimum wage increase had led to 2.2 million more jobs with something along the lines of "while employment levels can increase, the overall rate can drop if more people are being categorized in the labor force (i.e. population growth, etc.)" I myself have no real experience with modern economics, and I was wondering if anyone had any pertinent information on the subject of "Employment Rate" vs. "Employment Level?"

[papau]

1. Your friend refers to percentage of population looking for work or working - it's dropped under

Bush from the level in the Clinton years, but by dropping the "looking for work" portion of that number by using tighter definitions you get a lower unemployment rate...

If the economy was running at Clinton level more folks would be working, and more would be looking for a job, leading to math that ends up with a "high unemployment rate".

The amazing thing about Clinton getting a 3.8% unemployment rate was that he did it with a very high percentage of the population working or trying to get jobs.