Here's a follow-up to Friday's job report, in which the unemployment rate dropped despite the fact that the overall number of new jobs added was disappointing. That happened in part because so many people dropped out of the labor force, a total of 368,000 would-be workers.
The vast majority of those dropouts, though, were teenagers who might never have had full-time jobs before in their lives. According to the Labor Department, 209,000 people aged 16 to 19 dropped out of the labor force, as did an additional 218,000 people aged 20 to 24. The statistics may have a hard time accounting for younger people leaving their part-time summer jobs so they can go back to school.
Meanwhile, there was actually significantly growth in the labor force among older people. There were small upticks for the cohorts aged 25-34 and 35-44, and the number of people aged 55 and over entering the work force grew by a whopping 274,000 workers.
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