You have to go back all the way to the Jimmy Carter administration to find a time when the percentage of Americans in the workforce was lower than it is today. It now stands at 62.9%.
This has a lot to do with why the unemployment rate is so low—because a whole lot of people have decided to drop out of the labor market. This is particularly true for women, believe it or not. Their numbers have been decreasing for almost two decades. For men, the decrease has accelerated since the Great Depression.
This sort of disengagement suggests a discontent with work. That’s what I would guess. Because when all the rewards of working go strictly to the top as they do in our particular form of extraction capitalism, why bother working? All you are doing is helping to make the rich get even richer while you stand in place.
