It has come down to this for Brian Perry: an apple or banana for lunch, Red Sox ballgames on an old Zenith TV and long walks to shake off the blues. At 57, Perry has been unemployed and looking for work for nearly seven years, ever since that winter when the Great Recession hit and he was laid off from his job as a law firm clerk.
A record 92,269,000 Americans 16 and older did not participate in the labor force in August, as the labor force participation rate matched a 36-year low of 62.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The labor force participation rate has been as low as 62.
The Total Number of Americans Not in the Labor Force is over 92 million~ about 1/3 of the population. The latest official government statistics put the unemployment rate in the U.S.
