Labor Force Participation Rate Falls To Lowest In 50 years
14 181The US unemployment rate fell to 4.2% in June largely because 720,000 people left the labor force, pushing participation to 61.5%. Excluding the Covid-era jobs market, that's the lowest participation rate since June 1976. CNBC reports: The decline in the labor force marks a "massive exodus" driven by multiple factors, said Mike Reid, head of U.S. economics at RBC. "The unemployment rate fell to 4.2% as both the number of unemployed workers and the size of the labor force pulled back," Reid wrote in a post-report commentary. "This may well be a story of retirements but could also be a story of prior job seekers dropping out of the labor force."
[...] [T]he rolls of those counted as not in the labor force, a group that includes the unemployed and those not looking for work, jumped by 832,000. And while the establishment survey, which counts jobs filled, showed growth for the month of 57,000, the survey of households, which counts the actual level of those working, tumbled by 507,000. On a year-over-year basis, the labor force is down by just over 1 million, while the level of the employed also has fallen by 1.06 million and the ranks of the unemployed have risen by 40,000. The employment-to-population ratio slipped to 59% in June, the lowest since October 2021. All that has happened while the unemployment rate has risen by just one-tenth of a percentage point to 4.2%.
The drop in participation is sometimes attributed to a shrinking immigrant population and retiring baby boomers and Gen Xers. However, in June the biggest plunge came from what is defined as "prime age" workers, or those between the ages of 25 and 54. That rate fell 0.6 percentage point to 83.3%, its lowest since December 2023. "Looking at the statistics now, that argument doesn't hold up so well," North said of the retirement and immigration rationale. "I hate to use the word 'alarming,'" he added, but said the numbers are cause for concern.
14 comments
Probably people entirely disillusioned (Score: 5, Insightful)
by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday July 02, 2026 @05:15PM (#66220458)
Good for the MAGA morons, because they can claim "unemployment is down". Very bad for the country.
Re:Probably people entirely disillusioned (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Morpeth ( 577066 ) on Thursday July 02, 2026 @05:54PM (#66220496)
I was thinking the same, they play with numbers so that the unemployment rate looks better than it is, discouraged workers, those who haven't looked in the last 4 weeks (which could for a variety of reasons, illness, family issues, taking time to retrain, transportation problems, etc.), or a parent who has to stay home because childcare is insanely expensive and they'd spend more on it than they'd make (yes, it actually can happen). And people giving up looking for working or just retiring a bit early because their career it shot (I'm thinking AI replaced jobs) isn't a good thing.
Also, there's the issues of being underemployed, or taking jobs at a lower wage than they would normally, etc. So while they may be 'employed' their situation has degraded compared to the past.
Re:Probably people entirely disillusioned (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Local ID10T ( 790134 ) on <ID10T.L.USER@gmail.com> on Thursday July 02, 2026 @06:47PM (#66220576)
It is global. We saw these trends reported in China as the "Lie Flat" and "Let it Rot" movements. In Japan as "Satori Generation" or even "Hikikomori".
Hell in a handbasket... all of us.
Re:Probably people entirely disillusioned (Score: 5, Insightful)
by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Thursday July 02, 2026 @10:19PM (#66220796)
Not necessarily. While that is absolutely what the administration will do, and is doing, for a lot of the "angry boomer" set, they will be feeling this on the ground and in their community, and it can lead to one of the cardinal rules of politicking being violated;- "Dont tell the punters that the thing they are experience isnt what they are experiencing". When politicans say "The economy is great, look at this GDP!" but people are feeling like everything is more expensive, their kids cant find jobs, their own job is becoming more insecure, and the rent or mortgage payments keeps going up, then people just get angry and feel like they are being lied to and betrayed, and its that sense of being lied to and betrayed that lead to so many people going "Well this trump guys kind of an asshole, but at least he's honest".
Now, you and I know that "Honest" is literally the opposite of what trump is, but when Trump was out there campaigning that washington technocrats where letting people down, well he wasnt wrong. The institutional Dems and Republicans where very happy to stick with a status quo that had been getting worse and worse for average people ever since the sub prime mortgage crisis. Obama promised hope and change, but other than a marginally better health care system, not much changed. Biden seemed content to just try and fix some, but not all, of Trumps damage from his first term. People where angry, because the technocrats where telling them that "Everythings fine, America is America-ing, everything in its place" , meanwhile jobs where still fleeing offshore, grandma cant afford her diabetes meds, and wages where pegged while inflation ran rampant. Trump promised to fix that. Trump DIDNT fix that, and in fact made it worse, but the promise not the reality is what got him in the door.
There are lessons for Trumps opponents here, but the biggest is, the people on the fence about MAGA and the people who where marginally MAGA *can* be reached, and when the Dems get back in power, they actually need to concretely resolve the anxieties that caused Trump to get in in the first place. Because if America was working, Trump would have been impossible.
Stats are complicated (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Thursday July 02, 2026 @05:53PM (#66220494)
But I've never believed the unemployment rate was a valid measure of economic health. The numbers are fudged in too many ways.
How many people are able to work, want to work, and can't find full time employment above poverty line wages? That's what you need to look at.
Re:Stats are complicated (Score: 5, Informative)
by neo00 ( 1667377 ) on Thursday July 02, 2026 @06:25PM (#66220550)
It's worth noting that unemployment rate is not a single measure. The number usually cited is for U-3. There are several measures tracked by the BLS https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm [bls.gov] which may be more aligned with what you're describing.
The six state measures are based on the same definitions as those published for the United States:
U-1, persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force;
U-2, job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force;
U-3, total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (this is the definition used for the official unemployment rate);
U-4, total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers;
U-5, total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other marginally attached workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers; and
U-6, total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers.
Re:"Left the labor force" (Score: 5, Informative)
by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Thursday July 02, 2026 @06:13PM (#66220530)
No, it means they left their jobs and stopped looking for new ones. Which is muddled by the fact that some forms of self employment may show up as this sort of behavior, depending on whether its under-the-table type work.
Re:"Left the labor force" (Score: 5, Informative)
by Himmy32 ( 650060 ) on Thursday July 02, 2026 @06:22PM (#66220546)
Left the labor force [bls.gov] also means not actively looking for work. So it's more than just the losing a job, but also giving up looking. So people who "lost their job" and also retire, die, become a student, care for family, just become disheartened and give up.
So less about being sickeningly weasel worded, but having a different technical meaning that's a little different than common layperson usage.
Re:"Left the labor force" (Score: 5, Informative)
by swillden ( 191260 ) on <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Thursday July 02, 2026 @07:04PM (#66220602)
720,000 people left the labor force
This is the blandest, most watered-down way to say "lost their job" yet. Quite nauseating.
That's absolutely not what it means.
"Left the labor force" doesn't mean "they lost their job" it means "they aren't looking for a job". Examples of cases where people "leave the labor force" include (but aren't limited to):
* Retired.
* Had a child and decided to become a stay-at-home parent.
* Decided to spend their time caring for an elderly relative.
* Decided to go back to school.
* Gave up on working after being unable to find a job.
* Had a financial windfall and decided to stop working.
And so on. The "gave up after being unable to find a job" is not particularly likely in a job market where only 4.2% of people who want a job don't have one, though I suppose some may choose not to work rather than work in a less-desirable job than they had before.
Also, it's July 2. June employment numbers are basically worthless at this point. Give them a quarter or so to get more data and correct the numbers. The initial numbers are based on only on employer reporting data, which skews it in various ways. The government uses several other data sources including surveys, but it takes time for that data to come in, which is why these numbers are generally corrected 2-3 months after they come out.
People Underestimate COVID damage (Score: 5, Interesting)
by javaman235 ( 461502 ) on Thursday July 02, 2026 @06:06PM (#66220518)
I was an essential worker during Covid, and I got it twice. I was just never the same after, spacy forgetful, all kinds of problems. At work I was top tier before, but had problems after. Like I hyper aged from COVID or something. I wouldnâ(TM)t underestimate the amount of people who are actually messed up as workers from that.
Re: People Underestimate COVID damage (Score: 5, Informative)
by sherrysj ( 1077163 ) on Friday July 03, 2026 @09:45AM (#66221292)
Early waves of Covid, before the vaccines, caused blood clots throughout the body. In radiology, we saw blood clots in the small vessels of the lungs & brain. Organ-Specific Impacts:
The shift away from high rates of severe, widespread microvascular clotting occurred primarily between late 2021 and early 2022, driven by the sequential arrivals of the Delta and Omicron variants alongside widespread population immunity. While early-wave infections frequently presented as a devastating systemic clotting disorder, a multi-phase transition drastically reduced both the incidence and scale of thrombotic complications. [1] [slashdot.org], [2] [slashdot.org], [3] [slashdot.org], [4] [slashdot.org] Phase 1: Mid-2021 (The Delta Wave & Early Vaccination) By the time the Delta variant became dominant in the summer of 2021, mass vaccination campaigns had significantly altered clinical presentation. [3] [slashdot.org], [5] [slashdot.org]
Phase 2: Early 2022 (The Omicron Shift) The true evolutionary tipping point for how the virus interacted with human blood vessels arrived with the Omicron variant in late 2021 and early 2022. [4] [slashdot.org]
The Baseline Today While the acute risk of widespread microvascular collapse has fundamentally stabilized, the virus has not completely lost its thrombogenic edge. Large database reviews, including studies tracked by the CDC [cdc.gov], confirm that patients diagnosed with COVID-19 still experience a roughly 73% increased risk of a thrombotic event in the year following their illness when compared to patients infected with other acute respiratory infections like influenza. The difference today is that the risk is an incremental, post-acute vascu
Functional unemployment is 20% (Score: 5, Insightful)
by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday July 02, 2026 @06:15PM (#66220532)
Functional unemployment combines people who are underemployed and people who do not make enough money to be functional adults. People in this category who are getting by are either working homeless (we have half a million full-time working homeless) or they are receiving support from friends and family to keep a roof over their heads.
It's become so obvious that the books are cooked I don't think anyone can ignore it anymore and I have seen economists come up with all sorts of fun euphemisms to describe the actual situation.
None of this is sustainable. Here is where all the libertarian twats worried about toaster licenses show up to tell us why it's a good thing that Civilization is collapsing because nobody's going to tell them what to do right?
The average american, about 60%, read as a 6th grade level or the level of a 12-year-old. When you are 12 you get this burning desire to not be told what to do. Some people grow out of it and some people become libertarians or Republicans or some combination thereof.
Like the old joke, There are two novels that can change a bookish kid's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs
Re:Functional unemployment is 20% (Score: 5, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward ( None ) on Thursday July 02, 2026 @09:16PM (#66220734)
President Harry S. Truman proposed universal health insurance in 1945, where workers would pay a fee or tax and the government would then pay the doctor or hospital of the patient's choice
The AMA claimed this was "socialism" because the federal government controlled the money. They hired the public relations firm Whitaker and Baxter to launch one of the largest political advertising campaigns in U.S. history up to that point.
We have to recognize the propaganda war that we grew up in, and the results of which we live with today in order to stop this madness
Re:time to eat billionaires (Score: 5, Funny)
by dsgrntlxmply ( 610492 ) on Thursday July 02, 2026 @05:50PM (#66220490)
Fat content of most modern billionaires is too low to be graded any higher than Cutter/Canner. Also, many modern billionaires show evidence of brain prion disease from unorthodox longevity therapies.