WASHINGTON, DC – With over 8 million people mysteriously disappearing from the US workforce during President Barack Obama’s first term, experts are working on a number of theories to explain this riddle, the most commonly mentioned reason being alien abductions occurring throughout the US on an extraordinarily massive scale.

According to a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report, the number of people disappearing from the US workforce rose from 80.5 million when the president took office in 2009 to the current 89 million, while unemployment has remained steady near 8-9%. In other words, 8.5 million people have simply vanished in a way that can’t be explained by the usual retirement or disability trends.

“Since we can’t blame it on the economy, the only conceivable explanation is that someone is taking people out of the labor market by force,” said Malcolm Lenivie, noted economist for the DC-based Center for Keynesian Economics. “The President has spent $6 trillion in stimulus packages and all our studies indicate that his plan is working, so something else must be at play.”

Early theories included abductions by Mexican drug cartels, but leading security experts agree that it would be impossible to move eight million people across the US border undetected.

“Our border is extremely secure,” said border security analyst Jared Contrabandzis of the American Progressive Initiative, a non-partisan think tank. “No one can cross our southern border in any direction without our knowledge. The Border Patrol catches them all and reports them to the authorities - everybody knows that.”

Sources say the President is taking this matter very seriously and is putting pressure on the Pentagon to investigate the possibility of alien abductions and to find a way to stop the disappearance of the American labor force.

Insiders in Washington speculate that if top brass in the US Air Force do not take immediate action, President Obama will likely fire a number of generals and reorganize the command structure.

“The President will not let this crisis go to waste,” said Lenivie, adding that heads will roll all over Washington until one of these theories can be substantiated. “We know for sure the problem is not caused by the economy, since all of our numbers indicate that recovery is well on its way. It isn’t just around the corner, it is here.”

The White House is ordering the Air Force to review surveillance footage from radar stations throughout the world for evidence of alien aircraft, as intelligence satellites are being re-tasked from areas like the Middle East and China to scour the continental US for possible stashes of missing workers. “All those people must go back to work,” Lenivie said. “They are tax payers, and we need them to be productive in order to keep our economy moving forward and our debt payments current.”

This article is a satirical collaboration of The People’s Cube authors under the collective name of Igor Toutellalai.