This is the chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

So what does this mean? Breitbart.com posted a story about the numbers today.

The article reports:

July’s labor force participation rate however remained the the same as June at 62.6 percent. Before last month the labor force participation rate had not been that low since October 1977, when the participation rate was 62.4 percent.

The BLS reports that the civilian labor force did experience a slight uptick from 157,037,000 in June to 157,106,000 in July after the month of June saw it drop by 432,000.

While the labor participation rate remains at the lowest its been since the late 1970s, the BLS highlighted that the unemployment rate remained at 5.3 percent and nonfarm payroll jobs increased by 215,000.

The labor participation rate is a concern. The unemployment rate does not take the labor participation rate into consideration–it is based only on the number of people actually looking for work that are unemployed. The current labor participation rate is not indicative of a healthy economy.