Fed policy makers agreed at their last meeting that "gains in employment seemed to be on a gradually rising trajectory," though there was still substantial slack in the labor market, according to the minutes of their March 15 gathering.

No Improvement

For Dan LaRue, a 60-year-old former marketing specialist for JPMorgan Chase & Co., there's scant sign that the jobs market is getting better.

"The reality of what I'm seeing and what my fellow unemployed coworkers are seeing doesn't jibe" with reports of an improving labor market, said LaRue, who's been without a full-time job for more than two years. "It's kind of ugly out there."

The New York City resident said he's borrowing money from his 81-year-old mother to help make ends meet. "I hate it, but thank God she's there," he said. "I'm willing to take a pay cut, but I don't think I'm even being considered."

The ratio of people employed to the population stood at 58.5% in March, down 0.8 percentage point from July 2009 when the recovery began and up just 0.3 point from a 27-year low of 58.2% in November 2010, according to data from the Labor Department.

Better Measure

The ratio is a better measure of the jobs market because, unlike the unemployment rate, it isn't affected by changes in the size of the labor force, said Edward Leamer, a professor of management, economics and statistics at the University of California at Los Angeles.

About half of the fall in the jobless rate during the last four months was caused by Americans who gave up looking for work and left the labor force-a development that he said isn't something to welcome. "It's people getting so discouraged that they're dropping out," said Leamer, who is also director of UCLA Anderson Forecast.

That number may grow later this year as extended government unemployment benefits run out, Krueger added. To collect those benefits, the jobless must show that they are searching for work, and the longer people are without a job, the less time they spend looking, according to a study of 6,025 unemployed that Krueger conducted with Andreas Mueller of Stockholm University in 2009 and 2010.