The July jobs report put the national unemployment rate at 4.1%, its lowest reading of 2026. Employers shed 23,000 jobs that month and the civilian labor force contracted by 264,000, CNBC reported.
Overall participation fell to 61.4%, its weakest since early 2021 and, outside the Covid period, the lowest since 1976.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies a person as unemployed only while they are actively looking for work. Anyone who abandons the search leaves the calculation entirely, which lowers the headline rate.
The American Institute for Boys and Men, a nonpartisan research organization that published an analysis of the trend in May, found the share of men aged 16 to 24 neither enrolled in school nor in the labor force doubled from 4% in 1990 to 8% in 2024.
The institute identified the participation drop among that age group as the steepest of any male cohort it examined.
