More unemployed workers are finding jobs than dropping out of the labor force in recent months, a new trend for the slow economic recovery of the past seven years.
In the year through April, 25,000 more unemployed workers moved into jobs than quit looking for work altogether, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The corresponding number for March was even better, at 127,000.
The past two months are the first time that, on a 12-month basis, more people have left unemployment for jobs than for falling out of the workforce since the recession began.
Labor force participation has fallen off a cliff since the recession began in 2008, from 66 percent to 62.8 percent today.
In part, the drop has been driven by predictable demographic changes, especially the retirement of the Baby Boom generation. Those factors are expected to keep putting downward pressure on the labor force participation rate, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects to keep falling for years.
But the weak economic recovery has also played a role in suppressing labor force participation. Over the course of the recession and recovery, millions of workers have had such a hard time finding work that they have stopped looking, falling out of the bureau’s calculation of the workforce even if they might want a job.
As the unemployment rate has fallen to 5 percent, however, the labor market has drawn more workers into the job hunt. As a result, labor force participation has defied the demographic pressures to not just stop falling but actually rise in recent months, up from 62.4 percent in September.
