The unemployment rate currently sits at 5.4%, according to jobs data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The participation rate, on the other hand, is just 62.8%.
The BLS defines people not in the labor force as those ages 16 and older who are neither employed nor have they “made specific efforts to find employment sometime during the 4-week period ending with the reference week.”
The participation rate rose from 62.7% in March, which matches the lowest it has been since 1977. The gain was paced by 45-to-64 year-old Americans returning to the work force.
The month of April is the second month where the number of people not in the workforce – whether due to discouraged workers or retiring baby boomers – was greater than 93 million. Last month saw the number of people dropping out of the labor force increase from March’s record 93,175,000.
The US economy added 223,000 jobs in April, which helped make the current unemployment rate the lowest since May 2008. However, the feds dramatically revised the number of jobs created in March, lowering it to just 85,000 from 126,000.
“This is what a recovery looks like,” said economist Justin Wolfers on Twitter. “Employment keeps growing. Unemployment keeps falling. And we ignore occasional hiccups in the data.”
House Speaker John Boehner said the new figures prove that improvements to the economy are still necessary.
“While the economy continues to show some signs of improvement, too many middle-class families are struggling just to get by,” the Republican from Ohio said. “Too many Americans remain out of work, and too many are working harder only to lose ground to stagnant wages and rising costs. We can do better.”
