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That almost 40% of adults in a population are not working is insane. I want a breakdown of how many of those are rich ppl living off the stolen wealth of those still burdened with labouring?
We were told that kicking people off social programs would mean job seekers galore. Next month, surely, all the jobs will appear.
Interestingly, the more generous unemployment and social benefits are, the higher the employment rate typically is. The correlation is actually pretty strong. (Note: the table lists employment rate by the OECD measure, ages 15-64, whereas the BLS figure cited in the OP uses ages 16+ including retirees.)
While perhaps paradoxical at first glance, it makes sense if you think about it, since a more inclusive society also makes sure fewer people become detached from society, and more generous benefits also enable a more flexible labour market.
In this sense, the employment rate dropping at the same time the (already mediocre) safety net is being dismantled in the USA is unsurprising. It isn't because of an innate lack of "jobs," but because fewer people are in a position to be able or willing to work jobs.
Yep, you give people enough of a reason to want to pay it forward, then they'll pay it forward.
Exactly, the "kick them while they are down, will help them get up" mentality surprisingly doesn't work.
"Job seekers giving up" says society literally firing everyone to replace them with "AI".
The job market is horrible. I can't speak for STEM or Medicine but I've ended up working seasonal jobs where I travel state to state. I couldn't find a job that paid enough back home where I could support myself. Not to mention fake job postings or postings where they're not actually hiring but just to meet a company quota.
I can also speak for STEM. if you're not currently in it, you're not getting into it. and if you get out of it, unless you're some kinda rockstar dev that is crucial to some companies survival, you're not getting back into it. At one point you'd be competing against off shored dudes from India, which was easy to over come. Now not only are you competing with them who are now working for less pay than what they were before, you're also competing with the ones that are willing to leave India and work in person for less pay AND AI AND fresh grads willing to work for minimum wage to be a prompt monkey. AI is a primary factor but it's only one of the factors. Competent and qualified people in STEM are going the way of the buffalo. And I'm telling you now we're all collectively fucked as a result. Mark my words data "leaks" like that one from that dating app a year or so ago are going to look like a casual sunday stroll in the park compared to what is eventually coming. they'll be more frequent and be coming from everyone especially various governments.
I'm getting out of it this October and taking an early retirement. I want no part of it.
Yeah, that well is sort of drying up. It was a good go though.
I can speak for STEM, and AI has erased any possibility of landing a job. Specifically, every part of the job hunt has been tainted by AI:
AI job recruiters and AI-generated job postings use AI to search resumes and applications for key words, but even if you use said key words, your resume may not be picked up unless you use an AI resume builder to generate a resume that the AI job recruiter and application can analyze, then and only then, you just might have a chance at an interview...with an AI interviewer.
I genuinely wish the worst possible deaths on AI corpo shillionaires.
Frankly, the corporations and ultra rich do not deserve the workers’ contributions. I have a very small sliver of hope (not expectation) that unemployed people will band together and put these people out of business.
- June’s drop in the unemployment rate was because of an exodus of workers from the labor force.
- The labor force participation rate, which measures the working-age population of those either employed or looking for a job, fell to 61.5%, the lowest since March 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- Excluding the Covid-era jobs market, it was the lowest participation rate since June 1976.
- The labor force plummeted by 720,000 in June.
On the surface, a June drop in the unemployment rate helped provide some upside to what was an otherwise downbeat jobs report — but it was for all the wrong reasons.
That’s because the decline in the jobless level to 4.2%, the lowest in a year, came largely from an exodus of workers from the labor force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data Thursday.
In fact, the measure of the working-age population either employed or looking for a job slid to 61.5%, the lowest since March 2021. Excluding the Covid-era jobs market, it was the lowest labor force participation rate in exactly 50 years.
Labor force participation rate
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.”
Quitting the search
Within the bureau’s household survey, where the participation numbers are drawn, is a story of a consistently contracting labor force potentially driven by unemployed workers simply giving up.
In June alone, the labor force, a measure of those either employed or not employed and looking for work, plummeted by 720,000. Similarly, the 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%.
“What really affects me is not so much the unemployment rate,” said Dan North, senior economist for North America at Allianz. “What’s an important development is the participation rate, and this is a big leg down in one month, and over the past year it’s a pretty big leg down. I think this is a more important number.”
Not just retirees
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.
To be sure, some economists said the June numbers seem out of sort. Specifically, they cited the large decline in leisure and hospitality workers as a sign that the data could be noisy.
But the participation numbers are part of a continuing trend.
“It was shocking to see 720,000 people stop looking for work entirely and the hospitality sector shed jobs,” wrote Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “It’s a better job market than a year ago, but opportunities are limited.”
I suppose that's one way to cook the unemployment rate to look good.
I don't understand the macroeconomics rabbit-hole well enough to know the details, but it seems to me that there is a complex set of mathematical formulae and models economists use to make their analysis, predictions, and recommendations from. Then, from those, there are patterns that emerge from the data that more general "rule of thumb" guidelines are derived from, which enable people without an economic background to watch for those patterns and make their own analysis, predictions, and direct actions without having to fully understand the underlying reasoning; sort of like standing on the shoulders of the experts.
Then, lately, reporting rules have been changed and/or fudged, which has led to a scenario where those familiar patterns no longer necessarily work the same or foretell the same things, causing potentially big miscalculations by the non-economists making pattern-based analysis.
What I still wonder about, though, is whether the actual economists have enough data, knowledge, and modeling to continue to make accurate analysis in this new environment themselves. A follow-up question to that would be, "How long might it take for people that have lost the ability to navigate the new economic landscape to regain that ability, assuming that can that even be done?"
Could the june drop be related to AI increasing prices?
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2026
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