The Patriot Post® · Dismal Labor Participation Rate

Democrats focus on just one piece of the economic puzzle amid a still tepid recovery: the overall unemployment rate, currently at 6.6%. That may seem like progress to the uninformed, yet it shadows an important element leftists refrain from discussing: the ever-dwindling labor participation rate which continues a precipitous fall, ending 2013 at a measly 63.2%. You have to go back 35 years (1978) to the Carter administration to find a comparable stat. And according to CNSNews, “In 2000, there was an annual average of 69,994,000 Americans not in the labor force. By 2013, there was an annual average of 90,290,000 not in the labor force. In January 2014, according to BLS, there were 92,535,000 not in the labor force.” In other words, any unemployment “progress” can almost entirely be pinned to a smaller workforce.