Half of the reason for the 'decline' is the way Team Obama computes jobs now - the short of it is when a job hasn't been filled for so long, that job as well as the unemployed person that once filled it cease to exist. On the surface it 'computes' since Team Obama is dropping one person as well as one job from the rolls, but in practice it results in a net decrease in unemployment percentage.
Here is some simple math to prove it :
Let's say there are a total of 1 million jobs, and a million employees to fill them, starting off at an unemployment rate of 0%.
Things get bad, and 100 thousand people are laid off. That figures at 10% - on your calculator enter 100,000 divided by 1,000,000 and then hit the percent key. - 10%.
After so long, Obama declares 5 thousand of those jobs no longer exist, and also removes 5 thousand unemployed from the rolls - So, on your calculator, enter 95,000 divided by 995,000 and hit the percent key.
The new number is now an unemployment rate of 9.55%, and not the 10% the average person would assume since both the number of jobs and the number of unemployed were adjusted "equally" (one to one).
And the DUmp celebrates ! "Obama brought the Unemployment rate Down !!!! Wheeeeeee!!!!" when the truth is Obama did nothing but change the formula. The same number of people are still unemployed.