The labor force is everyone age 16 and older who is either working or actively looking for work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) uses this definition to measure the size and health of the U.S. workforce each month. As of March 2026, the labor force participation rate sits at 61.9 percent, meaning roughly six out of every ten working-age civilians are either employed or job hunting.
Who Counts as Part of the Labor Force
The labor force has two groups: employed people and unemployed people. If you fall into either category, you’re in. If you fall into neither, you’re out.
You count as employed if, during the week the government surveys you, any of the following are true:
- You worked at least one hour as a paid employee.
- You worked at least one hour in your own business, trade, or farm.
- You were temporarily away from your job (on vacation, sick leave, or similar) whether or not you were paid.
- You worked at least 15 unpaid hours in a family-owned business or farm.
That threshold is surprisingly low. A single hour of paid work in the survey week puts you in the “employed” column, even if you’re working far fewer hours than you’d like.
You count as unemployed if all three of these are true at once: you didn’t work during the survey week, you were available to work, and you made at least one active effort to find a job in the prior four weeks. Being on temporary layoff with an expectation of recall also qualifies. The key word is “active,” which means things like submitting applications, contacting employers, or attending job fairs. Simply browsing listings doesn’t count.
Who Is Not in the Labor Force
Anyone who isn’t working and isn’t actively looking for work falls outside the labor force entirely. This is a large group. Nearly four out of ten working-age civilians aren’t counted. Their reasons, as categorized by the BLS, include retirement, attending school, home responsibilities like caregiving, illness or disability, and an inability to find work.
That last category is worth pausing on. Some people have searched for work, gotten discouraged, and stopped looking. Because they’re no longer actively job hunting, they drop out of the labor force and are no longer reflected in the unemployment rate. Economists sometimes call these “discouraged workers,” and their absence from official unemployment figures is one reason that rate can understate the true level of joblessness.
The BLS also excludes certain populations from the count entirely. Active-duty military members, people in prisons or jails, and residents of facilities like skilled nursing homes are not part of the civilian noninstitutional population, which is the base group the labor force is drawn from. They’re outside the equation before the employed-or-looking question even comes up.
How the Participation Rate Works
The labor force participation rate measures what share of the working-age civilian population is in the labor force. The formula is straightforward: divide the number of people who are employed or unemployed by the total civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and older, then multiply by 100.
A participation rate of 61.9 percent (the March 2026 figure) means that for every 100 civilians of working age, about 62 are either holding a job or looking for one. The remaining 38 are not participating, for the mix of reasons described above.
This rate has drifted slightly lower over the past year. It was 62.5 percent in March 2025, falling to 62.1 percent in January 2026 and 61.9 percent by March. Those shifts may look small, but each tenth of a percentage point represents hundreds of thousands of people entering or leaving the workforce.
Why Age Matters
Participation varies dramatically by age. Workers between 25 and 54, often called “prime-age” workers, participate at 83.8 percent. That’s the core of the workforce: people past school age and before typical retirement. Workers 55 and older participate at just 37.2 percent, reflecting the large share of that group that has retired.
The overall participation rate blends these groups together, which means it shifts as the population ages. When a large generation like the baby boomers moves into retirement, the headline participation rate drops even if younger workers are joining the labor force at healthy rates. This is one reason economists pay close attention to the prime-age rate as a cleaner signal of workforce engagement.
Why the Labor Force Matters to You
The size and makeup of the labor force feed directly into the economic indicators you hear about most often. The unemployment rate, for instance, is calculated using only people in the labor force. If you’re not working and not looking, you aren’t unemployed by the official definition. That distinction shapes public policy, interest rate decisions by the Federal Reserve, and the way employers think about how tight or loose the job market is.
For individuals, understanding the labor force framework helps put personal situations in context. A stay-at-home parent, a full-time student, and a retired 70-year-old are all “not in the labor force,” but their circumstances are wildly different. Someone who stopped job searching out of frustration also falls into that same statistical bucket, even though their experience has far more in common with the unemployed. Knowing how these categories work helps you read jobs reports with a sharper eye and understand what the headline numbers capture and what they leave out.