Catherwood LibraryILR School

In a disturbing trend that suggests a job market even bleaker than that revealed by official unemployment rate calculations (see WIT's for Jan. 29 and 24, 2002), the U.S. Labor Department has reported that 1 million Americans have dropped out of the workforce since June in the largest such drop since the months following September 11, 2001. Because workers who have given up on finding employment are considered to be outside the workforce and are not counted in government calculations of the unemployment rate (see WIT for Sep. 9, 2002), this latest leap in the nationwide total of adults not looking for work to 72.4 million has likely hidden a significant increase in unemployment. While many of the 1 million may be recent retirees, the sudden jump in the number of employable adults no longer looking for work strongly suggests that many of those who have quit looking did so because they have given up on finding a job in today's weak labor market.