{"id":5077,"date":"2026-07-22T09:38:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T09:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=5077"},"modified":"2026-07-22T09:38:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T09:38:17","slug":"number-of-americans-not-in-the-labor-force-surges-to-record-105-8m-as-total-exceeds-great-recession-covid-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=5077","title":{"rendered":"Number of Americans ‘not in the labor force’ surges to record 105.8M as total exceeds Great Recession, COVID era"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It\u2019s hot NILF summer for American workers.<\/p>\n

The number of adults who are \u201cnot in the labor force\u201d (NILF) surged to an all-time high in June to 105.8 million, according to\u00a0figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.<\/p>\n

Read more Chilling audio captures frantic heartbreaking search for 5 people, including two sets of parents, who died in mass drowning<\/a><\/p>\n

The record comes after a massive surge of 832,000 workers dropping out of the labor force in June alone. The overall number of NILFs is higher than at the height of the Great Recession or the COVID pandemic.<\/p>\n

The definition is broad \u2014 it covers all Americans age 16 and over who aren\u2019t currently working, including retirees and students.<\/p>\n

Leading labor economist Nicholas Eberstadt told The Post that drilling down into the data reveals a startling pattern of dropouts, particularly among men.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a big problem\u2026with the flight from work of prime-age men. And what\u2019s been carrying the overall prime-age labor force participation has been the strong involvement of women, not men,\u201d said Eberstadt, who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute.<\/p>\n

Some 5.3 million workers \u2014 5% of NILFs \u2014 have dropped out because they are discouraged or they\u2019re not even bothering to look for work.<\/p>\n

In addition, up to 22% of America\u2019s NILF population are on long-term illness, disability, or other forms of benefits \u2014 representing more than 23.3 million Americans.<\/p>\n

That startling figure is even higher than the percentage of Americans over 16 in full-time education, which is between 16 and 18%, or just over 19 million Americans.<\/p>\n

By far the largest segment of the NILF population is retirees, who make up up to 50% of the total Americans not working. That\u2019s not surprising, given the large cohort of Baby Boomers who are in their golden years.<\/p>\n

Some 45% of NILFs are retirees who took standard retirement at the age of 65 or later. About 3-5% retired early.<\/p>\n

While the absolute number of NILFs is at a record, the portion of Americans in the labor market hit 59% in June. That\u2019s the lowest since September 2021, as the US emerged from the pandemic. <\/p>\n

Before that, the portion of Americans in the labor market only dropped so low after the Great Recession.<\/p>\n

Turn on, tune in, and drop out<\/h2>\n

Another factor for Eberstadt is the increasing number of dropouts \u2014 otherwise fit and healthy Americans opting not to work or try to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery roughly speaking, there are about 7 million of these men who are out of the labor force for the 25-to 54-year-olds,\u201d said Eberstadt, whose 2016 book, \u201cMen Without Work,\u201d discussed the phenomenon of American men in their prime leaving the workforce.<\/p>\n

However, the issue isn\u2019t limited to men, he argues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are about 3.5 million women who are kind of like the doppelgangers to this,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s a growing group of dropout women who are neither working nor looking for work, have no children under the same roof with them, and no husband present.\u201d<\/p>\n

An American issue<\/h2>\n

While some of these factors could be put down to a rapidly aging population, Eberstadt pointed out that other societies that are becoming older aren\u2019t seeing the same patterns of dropouts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at what\u2019s going on in Europe and Japan, which are both aging, shrinking societies, their workforce participation rates are going up now. So it\u2019s not as if it\u2019s impossible for aging, shrinking societies to mobilize more or involve more in the workforce,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the healthiest, best educated Americans that have ever lived on the planet,\u201d Eberstadt said.<\/p>\n

He puts America\u2019s growing NILF population down to a sprawling, disconnected archipelago of disability programs, which he argues offer many \u201cblind spots\u201d allowing people to fall through the cracks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe extent and the sprawl of participation or dependence upon different disability programs is a blind spot,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no office in Washington, DC, big as it is, that can tell you how many Americans are receiving benefits from which disability programs and how many in collectivity and how many are receiving from multiple disability programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

No to UBI<\/h2>\n

With AI becoming increasingly integrated into \u201cwhite-collar\u201d industries, raising fears of mass job cuts, there have been calls to bring in a so-called universal basic income, or UBI \u2014 which pays people for merely existing.<\/p>\n

However, Eberstadt warns that this would only worsen the number of dropouts in American society.<\/p>\n

\u201cDisruptive technologies in the past have been really great for people who have had skills,\u201d he said. \u201cTheir productivity and incomes have gone up a lot.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve also displaced a lot of labor for people who don\u2019t have skills. It looks like we\u2019re going to be on that same track with AI, wherever it goes in the next 18 months or 10 years,\u201d Eberstadt said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Henry Ford came down the road, I don\u2019t think that anybody had any idea what a combustion engine was going to do in mass-produced cars,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut\u00a0I would not like to see a guaranteed income, a UBI. Because I look at how men who are neither working nor looking for work say that they are spending their days now. And it is very depressing to see what they say they are doing. And I wouldn\u2019t like us to be buying more of that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are not engaged in civil society, not helping out around the house, not getting out of the house. Spending 2,000 hours a year in front of a screen. That\u2019s a great warm-up act for becoming a statistic in deaths of despair,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Read more Couple among 5 who drowned in Ohio river tragedy ID\u2019d as their young children left without any living relatives in US<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The number of adults who are “not in the labor force” (NILF) surged to an all-time high in June to 105.8 million, according to\u00a0figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"yoast_head":"\nNumber of Americans 'not in the labor force' surges to record 105.8M as total exceeds Great Recession, COVID era - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=5077\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Number of Americans 'not in the labor force' surges to record 105.8M as total exceeds Great Recession, COVID era - 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