37.2%: Percentage Not in Labor Force Remains at 36-Year High

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The percentage of American civilians 16 or older who do not have a job and are not actively seeking one remained at a 36-year high in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In December, April, and now May, the labor force participation rate has been 62.8 percent. That means that 37.2 percent were not participating in the labor force during those months.

Before December, the last time the labor force participation rate sunk as low as 62.8 percent was February 1978, when it was also 62.8 percent. At that time, Jimmy Carter was president.

In April, the number of those not in the labor force hit a record high of 92,018,000. In May, that number declined by 9,000 to 92,009,000. Yet, the participation rate remained the same from April to May at 62.8 percent…(snip)

…In May, according to BLS, the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population, consisting of all people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, hit 247,622,000. Of those, 155,613,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job or actively seeking one.

The 155,613,000 who participated in the labor force equaled only 62.8 percent of the 247,622,000 civilian noninstitutional population, matching (along with the 62.8 percent rate in May) the lowest labor force participation rate in 36 years.

Note: “Actively seeking a job” is not the same as having,/i> a job. A concept which is lost on the Bureau of Labor Statistics disingenuous “labor force participation” number crunching.

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Also, those who say employment is making steady gains need to remember most of the jobs since economic downturn are part-time jobs. Part-time jobs are not the full-time jobs that are needed to fuel a real recovery.

This article is about the sorriest excuse for legitimate reporting that it could possibly be. It didn’t bother to mention any of the most important details of the labor report:
That employment has risen to an all-time high.
That significant gains in full-time manufacturing jobs were made – in the auto industry, a certain harbinger of a healthy and strengthening economy.

It also didn’t bother to mention that the stock market is at an all-time high, and it isn’t there because the economy is weak.
It also failed to mention that these employment gains were made against a back-drop of increasing rates of retirement of baby-boomers whose increasing influence on the ranks of “not-in-the-labor-force” citizens has been anticipated for as many decades as their existence has been known.

When you add to the ranks of retirees who have worked hard and who have earned their rest and their pensions and their Social Security all of the “I’m a gamer with my head up my arse and I’m going to live off of my parents ’till they’re dead” generation and all of the drop-out crack-heads who are destined to spend a third of their lives incarcerated, you might appreciate that our current president isn’t the problem you’re trying to paint him to be. The problem with the low labor-force participation is that record numbers of Americans DON’T WANT TO WORK!

Pathetic!

@George Wells:

As usual, Georgie does not bother to provide anything to support his claims.

That employment has risen to an all-time high.

From the last year of the Bush administration to present, the quarterly BLS information directly disputes your disingenuous claim. Full time employment is definitely NOT at a high time high, only part time and temporary employment has risen. Apples are not oranges.

the stock market is at an all-time high

The Stock Market has no bearing whatsoever on the job situation. It’s an arbitrary valuation of a company’s worth by buyers and sellers of corporate stock. Very often, the value of a stock rises when companies lay-off workers. The vast majorities of businesses are not hiring, and many have even paid severance packages to divest themselves of loyal long term workers so as to replace them with lower pay new replacement workers. (This has become very common practice in union work force shops.)

failed to mention…retirement of baby-boomers..

Retired individuals by definition are not considered by the BLS or anyone else to be in the labor force. What planet are you living on?

The problem with the low labor-force participation is that record numbers of Americans DON’T WANT TO WORK!

You are clearly clueless about the reality of the situation: Very large ratios of people generally show up as a result of employment announcements to apply for a mere handful of a company’s listed jobs, The fact is that many of those who you claim ‘don’t want to work’, were dropped from the BLS’s count because their unemployment/severance has run out. They may very likely still be looking for work, but the BLS simply no longer counts them as doing so. Many of the long term unemployed have become so discouraged, that after years of looking, they gave up, not because they don’t want to work, but because they can’t find employment for their skills. You insult all those people by callously including them in your arbitrary “DON’T WANT TO WORK!” count.

Ditto
they seem to be able to afford not working with all the aids they have,
or they are waiting for the next leadership to rise as many companies are doing BYE