The number of people not in the labor force reached another record high in July, according to new jobs data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The BLS reports that 93,770,000 people (16 and older) were neither employed last month nor had made specific efforts to find work in the prior four weeks.
The number of people outside the workforce in July increased 144,000 over June’s record when 93,626,000 were not in the workforce.
July’s labor force participation rate however remained the the same as June at 62.6 percent. Before last month the labor force participation rate had not been that low since October 1977, when the participation rate was 62.4 percent.
The BLS reports that the civilian labor force did experience a slight uptick from 157,037,000 in June to 157,106,000 in July after the month of June saw it drop by 432,000.
While the labor participation rate remains at the lowest its been since the late 1970s, the BLS highlighted that the unemployment rate remained at 5.3 percent and nonfarm payroll jobs increased by 215,000.