I'm sorry, I had assumed that the onus of proof lay with the person making the original (and countrary-to-popular-belief-and-best-available-statistics) claim that unemployment was still increasing.

Participation, of course, is a tricky beast. Sometimes people stop participating because they're despairing over being able to find a job, but they also retire, or get pregnant, or go back to university or (if immigrants) their home countries.