this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026

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United States | News & Politics

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Labor force participation falls to 61.5%, the lowest in 50 years outside COVID, and economists say it's not just people giving up (fortune.com)

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[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 26 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

"Participation"

Yeah how dare they not participate after getting fired.

[–] AntiOutsideAktion@hexbear.net 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

bean-think not a single mention of long covid lol

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 day ago

Long covid is woke, and wokeness is a thoughtcrime.

[–] Zachariah@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Economists have spent the past week arguing about why 720,000 people walked away from the labor force in a single month. Laura Ullrich, director of economics at Indeed Hiring Lab and a former Richmond Fed economist, says that rather than treating June’s slide to a 61.5% labor force participation rate—the lowest reading outside the pandemic since 1976—as a story about discouraged workers giving up, it’s actually about supply: There simply aren’t enough workers left to fill the jobs employers have.

“Historically, you’ve been able to look at jobs numbers like what came out on Friday and say, ‘okay, there was a decline in leisure and hospitality. Well, that means there’s less demand for those workers,'” Ullrich told Fortune. “But I think now, and more commonly as we go forward, it actually could be labor supply driving some of that. There are two reasons why you might not add jobs in a month: One is there’s no demand for workers, the other is there is demand, but there’s not enough supply.”

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 day ago

What the fuck is Laura Ullrich smoking?

[+] curiousaur@reddthat.com -23 points 22 hours ago (8 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] marxismtomorrow@lemmy.today 4 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I can guarantee that you have no idea what your roles actually require, or that you're far too cheap and too bad of a boss to actually train workers or recognize talent.

If you cannot find labor at this point in US history, it is explicitly your fault. 100%. There are 70 million people according to this report that are out of work. I can guarantee you they're broke and looking for work. If out of 70 million people you cannot find 5 for your roles, and you've got the free time to post on Lemmy of all niche social media, you are bad at your job.

[–] CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Having mentored a number of interns that are still in college, there’s definitely competent grads out there.

Either you’re offering a joke salary or you’ve got a problem selecting talent.

[–] Subsonic220@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Strong opinions, but I've struggled with fresh outs since COVID as well. The graduates that started college during COVID were the worst. There was a significant drop in verbal communication skills. That has gotten somewhat better, but is nowhere near what it was with pre-COVID graduates. There's tons of little things that you need to work through with a lot of fresh outs that used to not be a problem. It's pretty common they won't let you know when they finish a task, and they'll wait for you to check in on them. The "better" ones that do this try to fill their time researching random stuff that interests them, the lower performer ones will just sit their on their phones doom scrolling.

[–] jacksilver@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Education got hit hard during Covid. I'm just starting to see some rebound in quality of students, but schools themselves haven't recovered either. So students are struggling and schools aren't in a good spot to help cover the gaps.

[–] Lowleekun@hexbear.net 9 points 14 hours ago

It is hard to find people qualified for ones bullshit.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 27 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (2 children)

imagine making people go into debt for access to the precious training to work your profession then rejecting them as useless anyway.

cut the hr bullshit and offer dignity and a good salary if you want people to care about the work you need done.

[–] jacksilver@lemmy.world 0 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Its not a matter of whether or not to hire, in my opinion. It's just a known issue that education got screwed during covid. The students have been performing worse and its led to less educated/adapted adults graduating from high school and college.

If you don't acknowledge there is an issue, then you can't do anything to help it.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

they made their bed. they wanted ai slop everywhere, they got it. they transferred wealth to themselves during covid, and got sick, struggling and demotivated workers.

they all want good workers but aren't investing a single dime in a way to better train and onboard the next generation. quite the contrary, starting a new career has never been so brutal while not giving a fuck if you can actually live with that salary.

and with how things are, if they simply paid well great people would be fighting for that job.

[+] curiousaur@reddthat.com -6 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

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[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 9 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

then why the fuck do you demand degrees instead of training the people how you need? why do you think people are going into life long debt for that shit in the first place?

the sheer entitlement of someone that didn't give me a single peep about what you are bringing to the table, but expects people to dedicate years of their life for you to still not consider them worthy of an entry level job.

don't expect people to bend over backwards to learn the shit YOU want them to when they are not even being paid for it.

[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

A lot of that is jobs requiring a BS for no reason and not even using the skills it teaches, and those jobs complaining that colleges don't teach enough Java or some other shitty industry tool or whatever in their theoretical computer science programs and colleges lowering standards to make themselves more marketable with higher graduation rates. And now they have software engineering degrees which is probably more relevant for a lot of software engineering jobs but they still expect CS.

[–] robotElder2@hexbear.net 15 points 17 hours ago

Wishing you a very eat broken glass

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 12 points 17 hours ago

Sounds like your requirements are too high

[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 15 points 20 hours ago

I'm a college grad looking for a job right now, if I'm worthless then what should I do differently?