The jobs figure Wall Street watches misses the bigger story

The July jobs report is out, and Wall Street will fixate on the headline payroll print. The stat you should watch instead is participation — who’s even still in the game. Just 61.4% of working-age Americans are in the labor force, down from a peak of 67.3% in 2000. Outside of COVID, that’s the lowest reading since 1976. Since January alone, participation has dropped by 0.7 percentage points — and because so many people keep leaving the workforce entirely rather than looking for jobs, the unemployment rate actually ticked down to 4.1%.