It's called the participation rate.  This is the percentage of working age people who are actually working or looking for work, currently 62.7% as stated in the article.  What that means is that 37.3% (Dana generously rounded up to 40%) of people who are of working age are not even looking for work, for whatever reason (early retirement, school, giving up and living in a basement, etc) and are not calculated in the unemployment rate.  As a result of more people not looking for work and dropping out of the workforce, the unemployment rate goes down. To determine the true strength of the workforce economy you need to look at both the unemployment rate and the participation rate.  Not made up nonsense and not from Bietbart News but a grown up way of tracking the health of employment in our country.  Good news is unemployment is dropping, bad news the participation rate is dropping. Economist analyze all data, politicos use the parts that make them look good. Dig deeper and know the facts.