Americans Leaving Work Force Reaches Record High in October

A record high number of Americans — 91,541,000 — have left the U.S. labor force, making it the lowest worker participation rate since 1978.

Citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Daily Caller reported Tuesday that 932,000 Americans left the labor force in October, making it the biggest decrease in one month since 2009.

When President Barack Obama began his first term in January of that year, the labor participation rate was 65.7 percent at 80,507,000, meaning that moe than 11 million Americans have left the work force during his presidency, due primarily to the recession.

Participation rate is now at 62.8 percent.

If the trend continues, the number of people not participating in the labor force will exceed the number of employed Americans in approximately four years.

The Washington Post cites the government shutdown, retiring baby boomers, workers opting for school over jobs, and the number of workers increasingly going on disability insurance as opposed to unemployment as all contributing factors to the shrinking labor force.

The smaller labor pool also suggests that the economy may be worse off than the official unemployment rate of 7.2 percent indicates, since unemployed figures do not include people who have left the labor market altogether.

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