Unemployment is down, but labor force participation is way down

This week's news about job creation and a sinking unemployment rate is seriously undercut by another figure released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: the labor force participation rate. Though only 5.6 percent of Americans who are looking for work can't find it, about 37 percent of adults have dropped out of the labor force entirely. These two figures combined mean that 42 percent of American adults are not working right now.

This is the lowest labor force participation rate since 1978, and it indicates that nearly 100 million adults have left the labor force. Thus, even though the unemployment rate is down among people looking for work, the civilian employment to population ratio is as grim as ever. --Bonnie Kristian

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

(via Zero Hedge)

Explore More

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.