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In April 2017, 1.5 million people were marginally attached to the labor force, down by 181,000 from April 2016. These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.
Month | Marginally attached | Discouraged workers | Other people marginally attached to the labor force |
---|---|---|---|
Apr 2007 |
1,391,000 | 399,000 | 992,000 |
Apr 2008 |
1,414,000 | 412,000 | 1,002,000 |
Apr 2009 |
2,089,000 | 740,000 | 1,350,000 |
Apr 2010 |
2,432,000 | 1,197,000 | 1,234,000 |
Apr 2011 |
2,466,000 | 989,000 | 1,477,000 |
Apr 2012 |
2,363,000 | 968,000 | 1,395,000 |
Apr 2013 |
2,347,000 | 835,000 | 1,512,000 |
Apr 2014 |
2,160,000 | 783,000 | 1,378,000 |
Apr 2015 |
2,115,000 | 756,000 | 1,360,000 |
Apr 2016 |
1,715,000 | 568,000 | 1,146,000 |
Apr 2017 |
1,534,000 | 455,000 | 1,080,000 |
Among the marginally attached in April 2017, 455,000 were discouraged workers, a decrease of 113,000 from April 2016. Discouraged workers are people not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. Other persons marginally attached to the labor forces describes people who had not searched for work in 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.
These data are from the Current Population Survey. To learn more, see "The Employment Situation — April 2017" (HTML) (PDF). More charts featuring Current Population Survey data are presented in Charts related to the latest "The Employment Situation" news release.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Economics Daily, 1.5 million people marginally attached to the labor force in April 2017 at https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/1-point-5-million-people-marginally-attached-to-the-labor-force-in-april-2017.htm (visited December 10, 2024).