Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

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MMilnerRoute about 3 hours ago 104 commentsRead Article on cnbc.com

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crossbody•about 3 hours ago

Sounds more like people retire somewhat early - for 25-54yo labor force participation near all time high: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060

And here is one for 55+yo: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11324230

All is fine

0x20cowboy•about 2 hours ago

I suppose it’s in how you word it. I’ve given up on trying to get a job because there is no point in trying. I can’t afford to pay my rent, but I guess you could call that early retirement.

cherryteastain•about 1 hour ago

Point of labor participation is that it's independent of whether you want to be employed or not.

overfeed•18 minutes ago

You and gp agree that characterizing non-paticipation as (voluntary) "early retirement" is unsupported.

mothballed•about 1 hour ago

If you can stomach it, the seafood canning and fishing industry in Alaska will usually (IDK what the situation is this year) hire anyone off the street, work them 16 hours a day for several months, and give them "free housing." You'll get dumped back in Seattle in several months with at least $10k in your pocket.

Edit: genuinely perplexed on the response. This saved my ass one winter when I had nothing for rent.

TuringNYC•about 1 hour ago

> Sounds more like people retire somewhat early

I know many ex-colleagues who have been retired early -- they face age discrimination and cannot find work.

arealaccount•about 3 hours ago

> 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.

It's great how two sources can tell a completely different story about the same numbers.

gruez•about 2 hours ago

>>its lowest since December 2023.

That should already make you skeptical, and after looking at the chart, I'm more on side "all is fine" than the doom narrative the article is pushing.

jjk166•about 2 hours ago

In other news, June worst full month since May.

mwwaters•about 2 hours ago

The first FRED link shows how noisy that subgroup is. It’s bounced around with 83-84% during that time. It was 83.8% in March and 83.5% through much of 2024.

cute_boi•about 2 hours ago

Additionally these number aren't trust worthy. Many time these number don't include full data like NEET and are manipulated so much etc..

kokonuts•about 1 hour ago

> All is fine

An aging population means 25-54 represent less workers and people "retiring" from the labor force before social security age is likely to be deeply negative for their finances into old age and not just a decision from the relative luxury of being able to select jobs with quick vesting pensions like in past decades.

If pension ages were going down over the years and the average worker were well vested by 55 then in that reality all would be fine.

throwaway27448•about 1 hour ago

Only if you view jobs as fungible, which they are obviously not.

jjk166•about 2 hours ago

It's likely not even people retiring early, just demographics shifting up the ages. The youngest baby boomers are 61. The percentage of Americans over the age of 60 increased from 22.8% in 2020 to 25% in 2025. Also the younger cohorts moving into the labor force are smaller as well.

https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...

gilrain•about 1 hour ago

I did retire somewhat early but also somewhat involuntarily and only after a somewhat fruitless search.

lifestyleguru•about 2 hours ago

I think you are grossly overestimating the number of people >55 years old who free willingly retire early because of having enough new worth. Already millenials' CVs are written off in recruitment pipelines.

titanomachy•about 1 hour ago

> millenials' CVs are written off in recruitment pipelines

I think you've got something wrong here, "millennials" refers to people currently between 30 and 45 and are surely the least likely to be discriminated based on either age or inexperience.

Avicebron•about 1 hour ago

Or they hit that sweet spot of being old enough to have commitments so they can't be a fresh grad slave and young enough to not have benefitted when the getting was good and easy and so they are discriminated against.

lifestyleguru•about 1 hour ago

Yes I mean this age group.

tootie•about 2 hours ago

Prime age is meant to filter college kids and retirees which makes sense but it is likely hiding the minor crisis in hiring for college grads. But I agree it's not disastrous just a yellow flag. The 20 year bull market has minted a lot of millionaires amongst the upper middle class and a lot of them are retiring early.

jjk166•about 1 hour ago

The 20-24 year olds seem to be at roughly the same point as since the great recession. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300036

Worth noting this is people who have a job, it includes the under-employed.

ghaff•about 2 hours ago

There's nothing wrong with retiring a few years early if you're comfortable doing so. I sorta did. On the other hand, I didn't really want to hang around too long after either.

mothballed•about 2 hours ago

55+ crushing it on the asset inflation mania they got at ~zero interest, the youngins left holding the bag of the inflationary cost renting out houses their seniors got negative real interest mortgages for.

bayarearefugee•about 1 hour ago

> 55+ crushing it on the asset inflation mania

Not all of them, some of them have just been pushed out of the workforce unwillingly due to ageism while still financially insecure.

I'm all about people being angry with the current situation and pushing for class war, but blanket assumptions about any demographic, including those of a certain age, is not helpful.

Avicebron•about 1 hour ago

Sure, 55+ and on the fringes are welcome in the tent. We need more people angry and vocal about it.

himata4113•about 1 hour ago

"retired" at 25-30 is also pretty common, or at minimum self employed and fully sustainable while putting in only 10-20 hours a week usually for 2-3 days a week.

Arainach•about 1 hour ago

Citation very much needed. Actually, it's not because we have the employment statistics to show that this isn't common at all.

klipklop•about 2 hours ago

Take an hour off at 2-3pm in any major US city and look at how many people are just milling about. Mostly shopping. There are a lot of people in the US that are not working.

Pre-2008 retail was quiet in the middle of the day, now it booms. I can’t comment on if this is a good or bad thing, but I am surprised at how many people are causally walking their dog as I am rushing to compete an essential errand and get back to work.

jjulius•about 1 hour ago

Asking because I'm genuinely curious myself, how much of this is unemployment vs the fact that so many more people work from home now compared to pre-2008? Many of those that WFH work a more flexible schedule and probably structure their days a lot differently than 20+ years ago.

zerr•about 1 hour ago

Yes, remote and part-time. Shopping on Monday afternoons is enjoyable.

ahnick•about 1 hour ago

Been remote since 2013 and can confirm Monday afternoon shopping is the alpha. ;-)

giobox•about 2 hours ago

I think this is going to be a much more common sight in most major western economies - many of them have a rapidly growing aged retired population and a declining young working segment etc.

The effects of this change are definitely being felt, good and bad, in many countries already.

lynndotpy•about 1 hour ago

I wonder what degree to which the shopping is inspired by a mixture of

- People anticipating high interest and price hikes in a world where many products are very-slowly-depreciating assets, in the case of game consoles and RAM, even appreciating, and

- A low current of suicidality, with an ambivalent regard towards the prospect of death once the account reaches $0.

- Alternatively, unemployed people in our field often find themselves free from a noncompete to work on profitable projects during unemployment.

echelon•about 1 hour ago

I can't speak for anyone else, but I get my errands done at 12 - 3ish.

I work 8 AM - noon, 3 PM - 2 AM. (Exact ranges vary.)

I don't have an office and I've never met most of my coworkers.

I'm exceedingly angry that restaurants and stores are no longer open until midnight. I used to do 11 PM Target shopping, 2 AM Walmart shopping, etc. Nothing is open late anymore, and it sucks.

klipklop•about 1 hour ago

100% agree that places close too early for folks that work into the evening.

escapecharacter•about 1 hour ago

When I worked at Meta, in the NYC office, any time I had 2-3 hours midday without meetings, I'd use it for errands.

shimman•about 1 hour ago

You realize not everyone works a normal 9 to 5 right, you honestly think every person shopping are unemployed? Are tech workers this deeply out of touch with normal people?

doubled112•about 1 hour ago

I think a lot of people forget this. Similar to how the retired/disabled people in my life forget how busy life with a job can be.

At the gas stations I worked at, the shifts were 7AM-3PM, 3PM-11PM, and 11PM-7AM.

I used to do a lot of things at abnormal times. What does a quick beer after work look like when you're done at 7AM?

I also don't know many unemployed people cruising around malls looking for ways to spend money.

klipklop•about 1 hour ago

I didn’t forget this. I worked for pennies in retail longer than I ever did anything else. I see a clear change over the past few decades.

TrackerFF•about 2 hours ago

Today I read about Accenture Norway taking in 56 summer internship students from over...1600 applicants. Record year, they reported.

Previously I imagined only the top-top tier firms could enjoy low single-digit acceptance rate, but here we have Accenture crushing it. Competition must be tough.

(But for what I know, could be that AI has made it easier for people to spam everyone with applications)

ghaff•about 2 hours ago

My guess is that it's simultaneously easy for a lot of companies to do automated filtering and for candidates to do a lot of automated applications in a way that's easier than sending out a bunch of envelopes. Which makes it harder for candidates who don't have either networks or impressive credentials.

rwmj•about 2 hours ago

I wonder if there'd be some value to only taking job applications by post.

ghaff•about 2 hours ago

An interesting question but arguably a lot of the most qualified applicants will go FU at that point and only the most desperate will put a stamp on an envelope which is probably not what you want.

Honestly, it probably comes down to more networking and credentials.

121789•about 2 hours ago

It’s too easy to apply now, the acceptance rate is not really a meaningful number

cute_boi•about 2 hours ago

Companies like Accenture/Infosys/TCS is the reason people are losing job. They outsource so much and tries to bribe managers to hire in India.

ben_w•about 2 hours ago

Of course Accenture outsources stuff.

They're based in Ireland. There's like 42k software developers in the entire country* and Accenture has 779k staff**, so they had to hire people in foreign places like Norway and the USA.

* OK, it says "Computer Programming": https://enterprise.gov.ie/en/publications/publication-files/...

** and I have no idea how many of them do "Computer Programming"

pooploop64•20 minutes ago

The labor shortage crisis has been going for over 200 years now, yet nobody can name a company that has died or otherwise suffered negative consequences as a result of it.

heldrida•15 minutes ago

Imagine spending 6 to 8 hours a day looking for opportunities and nothing for 1, 2 years. What are people supposed to do?

Alien1Being•about 1 hour ago

Our HR department has given up.

They are being inundated with thousands of AI slop applications each week.

Hiring has devolved to word of mouth recommendations.

heldrida•2 minutes ago

C’mon! So, when HR manages to get real candidates, why do we have to go through 8 stage of interviews that take months? It’s humiliating.

GenerWork•about 1 hour ago

As someone who's looking for a job, this is what I fear. How does one distinguish themselves from the thousands of other people who say "Claude, write a cover letter for this company, make no mistakes", and their cover letter has the same tone as every other cover letter?

himata4113•about 1 hour ago

this!!

Networking turned from a suggestion into being the only way of getting hired. I don't need a job, but I've gotten several emails from recommendations and I didn't have any 3 years ago or so, maybe an odd one here and there.

I think getting scouted is also one of the better ways of getting hired by having an active github profile with at least one popular open-source project even if it is AI slop.

paul7986•40 minutes ago

Tech WAS such a great career now it's total crap! The hey day of tech jobs when you received tons of prospective jobs offers via Linkedin feels like that's drying up (tho it could be my age which is not listed anywhere on Linkedin). From 2012 up until Spring 2025 each month I'd receive 3 to 6 recruiters offering a new UX Research, Design and or Front End Development job. Not anymore and now these jobs you are now competing with 100s to 1000s for just one job and if you are lucky enough to get an interview you have to go through 5 to 12 interviews LOL. Im laughing even more as i vibe code a project in which my previous personal projects i hired some help like a back-end developer or two. Nope I can do it all myself and save money like so many businesses are and will continue to.

Overall I can't imagine the killing all this head count cause blossomed too much and now AI definitely reducing head count futher is a good thing for an economy. An economy where these jobs let you buy nice single family homes in nice areas.

For me I havent left the job market but it's a huge joke now for techies and soon will be for a lot workers who use a computer to complete their work tasks. AI agents will be reducing all white collar jobs where only a few will be needed vs. 10 or 20 were needed before.

an0malous•about 3 hours ago

The money printing during COVID screwed everything up. Most of the capital was directly given to banks and businesses, fraudulently in many cases and unnecessarily in most, and everything pooled up into real estate and stocks so anyone who had already owned a large proportion of those became absurdly wealthy in the span of a couple years and everyone else effectively lost 20-30% of their income through inflation. The majority of all money was printed during COVID, no one voted for this to happen, no one bothered to even communicate how it was decided how much money would be printed and who would get it, and no retrospective has ever been done. It’s never been more clear that a small group of the wealthiest investors in the US run the show and the majority of people are wage slaves who had the ladder kicked out above them. Now we’re seeing an administration and elite class that is openly ransacking the country for whatever profits it can extract from a dying empire. I have no idea how this ever gets fixed.

Terr_•about 3 hours ago

> The capital was either directly given to businesses, fraudulently and unnecessarily in many cases

Especially concerning when a bunch of politicians were in on it, ensuring that the money went out willy-nilly and that $700+ billion in "loans" were turned into a straight up gift from the taxpayers.

https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/cre...

https://fortune.com/2020/07/08/ppp-loan-recipients-members-o...

gruez•about 2 hours ago

>ensuring that the money went out willy-nilly and that $700+ billion in "loans" were turned into a straight up gift from the taxpayers.

Wasn't that widely understood during the pandemic? All the coverage I've seen mentioned that the loans for forgivable if certain criteria were met, and nobody was like "yeah it's fine because it's a loan!".

cyberax•about 2 hours ago

The problem is that these loans went to _businesses_, not workers. There was an orgy of corruption, with newly formed LLCs claiming to have dozens of workers.

And then these loans were just forgiven. And since they went to businesses, Republicans are completely silent about that.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_Protection_Program

12hasgt•about 2 hours ago

You get the money back the same way Roosevelt did, 94% tax rate on the rich.

mothballed•about 2 hours ago

The effective tax rates have went down modestly, but approximately no one was paying anywhere near that. They were playing the same financial engineered fuck fuck games that are played today to get around it. It's the poor and middle class that can't get around those tax rates.

idiotsecant•about 2 hours ago

Wealth reform is needed more than any point in American history

trescenzi•about 2 hours ago

Yea the covid money printing is regularly pointed to as a reason why MMT is clearly bad but that ignores that there’s literally a solution to this problem in MMT. Raise taxes to reclaim the money. It’s a trivial solution which is sadly politically incredibly challenging.

gruez•about 2 hours ago

And yet, the amount of redistribution that's happening has never been higher, far exceeding the era of "94% tax rate on the rich", never mind that nobody actually paid that rate because the tax code was full of exemptions at the time.

https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20260221_IRC...

javascriptfan69•about 2 hours ago

Those graphs are about income, not wealth.

lovich•about 2 hours ago

I don’t see how this graph shows that claim. It says it’s graphing the effect of welfare on income ratios between top 10% vs the bottom 50% then just has an arrow pointing down saying “Stronger redistribution”

Where is the connection between the percentage being graphed and whatever their definition of “stronger redistribution” is?

And I just realized the second graph includes capital gains for the fiscal income but not for the after tax income? This just seems blatantly misleading with that detail being hidden in an asterisk.

Loughla•about 2 hours ago

Google Disaster Capitalism.

What we've done to other countries has finally turned inwards. It was just a matter of time.

lifestyleguru•about 2 hours ago

Oh the sweet shock therapy. Kids sniffing glue, women emigrating to prostitute, emergency services and doctors killing people for kickbacks, oligarchs, organized crime. Fun times.

stanleykm•about 3 hours ago

a big war, probably

MilnerRoute•about 3 hours ago

Headline cropped. It's the lowest participation rate "outside the Covid era".

Original headline: "Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation rate falls to lowest in 50 years, outside of the Covid era"

stvltvs•about 2 hours ago

In other words, the job market is as bad as during a global pandemic, on this particular metric.

tamimio•about 2 hours ago

It was never AI, it’s not “recession”, it’s not xyz, it’s simply since covid the wealth distribution got worse, further. It’s why you see the very few are with an exponential networth increase while the majority are suffering, at the same time, those who hold that networth are pulling all sort of shenanigans to keep the market alive and far from crashing for as long as possible, but it’s eminent and it will happen soon, the only exception is starting a major war to meat grind all these young men otherwise they will revolt for sure.

josefritzishere•about 2 hours ago

The current regime's policies are causing an economic recession.

fundad•about 2 hours ago

It's deliberate sabotage by an anti-growth movement.

Mountain_Skies•about 2 hours ago

The current regime and the previous regime both reported extremely low unemployment outside of the pandemic but don't let your partisan bigotry get in the way of facts. You are the reason why the uniparty is able to do this, as you will always be willingly blind to it as long as it has the right color coating on it. You are personally at fault.

Loughla•about 2 hours ago

I mean, the current party in power is making out in the open moves to profit directly from tanking the federal government. What's the centrist view in this one? A little robber baroning as a treat?

loeg•about 1 hour ago

There's a lot of real things you can criticize the current admin for, but "recession" isn't one of them.

chilldsgn•about 2 hours ago

I wish I could quit working. It is hell. Employers DGAF about people, so why should we care about them?

rwmj•about 2 hours ago

Save over 50% of your salary for relatively few years and you can.

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...

theodric•about 3 hours ago

And I'm not going back, either. Reckon I can slowly liquidate assets for as long as I have left to live. To hell with all this shit, my farm is enough.

sph•about 3 hours ago

I’m doing the same, and currently in the process of buying said farm.

woah•about 3 hours ago

Man rebels against capitalist system by living off of proceeds of ownership shares of capitalist system

theodric•about 2 hours ago

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

evdubs•about 2 hours ago

Laborer rebels against capitalist system by directly enjoying the fruits of his own labor.

mothballed•about 2 hours ago

The amount you can capture by directly enjoying it is crazy. You get double taxed on your labor. Once when you earn it, another when you spend it, and then the people you pay get taxed yet again on that! Plus their regulatory costs of licensing, insurance, property taxes, compliance, the cut of the shareholders/owners.

If you just do it yourself... there is no one to tax or take anything off the top. It often ends up you double your "income" from your work or better.

mc32•about 2 hours ago

Well, things don’t just appear from thin air. Someone has to work. Foraging isn’t much of an option in non tropical regions.

stanleykm•about 2 hours ago

ok but systems that are more favorable to workers are possible

FridgeSeal•about 2 hours ago

What kind of silly take is this?

“You deserve to starve instead!!” - is this really the position you want to argue?

fundad•about 2 hours ago

Man didn't say capitalist system. If anything, he's rebelling against what looks more like a centrally-planned economy than capitalism.

SlightlyLeftPad•about 2 hours ago

But you must pay tribute in the form of thousands of dollars in property taxes. Your first born child may also be acceptable.

theodric•about 2 hours ago

€98/yr

Not everywhere is America, fellow hacker.

SlightlyLeftPad•about 1 hour ago

To be fair, we were talking about Capitalism. There are few places more capitalistic than America currently.

But wow, 98€ is about how much it takes for me to take my family out to lunch at a fast food restaurant.

mothballed•about 1 hour ago

America has $0 property taxes in unincorporated Alaska, and possibly a few other places. The rates are determined locally. I pay very little but we also have no public roads and basically no fire or police -- you can pretty much pick what property tax rate you want if you're a little bit mobile.

amatecha•about 2 hours ago

Whoa nice, that's nuts. Curious what country if you don't mind sharing! No worries if not

kelseyfrog•about 1 hour ago

We live in a capitalist society. This means we prioritize making money via capital rather than through labor. It looks like we just got what we've asked for. I'm not sure what the problem is.

If you're playing labor in a capitalist society, you're playing a losing strategy.

orphereus•about 1 hour ago

What?

kelseyfrog•39 minutes ago

Huh?