This is the 14th straight month that this "not in the labor force" number has remained above 100,000,000. With so many people not in the labor force, the labor force participation rate has remained stubbornly low in recent years, and it did not budge in October. The labor force participation rate reached a Trump-era high of 63.4 percent in January 2020, just before the onset of COVID. The labor force participation rate has remained within a narrow range of 61.4 percent to 61.7 percent since June 2020. The Congressional Budget Office has noted that a lower labor force participation rate is associated with lower gross domestic product and lower tax revenues.
