{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=1EC88B56-D4D7-4CD2-B6B9-74696CFF1C9D", "Bloomberg Businessweek: Not Looking for Work: Labor-Force Participation Hits 35-Year Low", "2013-09-09", "2013", "2013-09", "Independent", "House", "VT", "Bernard Sanders", "S000033", "sanders.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Not Looking for Work: Labor-Force Participation Hits 35-Year Low\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t By:\u00a0 Peter Coy \n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tMonday, September 9, 2013\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\tA job seeker speaks to a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 professional at a National Career Fairs job fair in Arlington, Va., on Jan. 30\r\nThe unemployment rate fell in August but for the worst of reasons: Many Americans\u00a0stopped looking for work\u00a0so they weren\u2019t counted among the unemployed. What\u2019s harder to tell is why they stopped looking. The political right chalks it up to laziness and government coddling, while the political left says people are giving up looking because a dysfunctional economy isn\u2019t producing enough jobs.\r\nThe Bureau of Labor Statistics\u00a0said the August unemployment rate was 7.3 percent, down a tick from 7.4 percent in July. The worrisome part is why the rate fell. The size of the workforce declined by about 300,000 and the participation rate fell to 63.2 percent from 63.4 percent\u2014the lowest since August 1978. The participation rate is the number of people either working or actively searching for work as a share of the working-age population. It rose steadily over the years as more women entered the workforce before falling sharply in the 2007-09 recession, and it hasn\u2019t recovered since.\r\nAlso disappointing was the payroll report. While the 169,000 added to employers\u2019 payrolls in August wasn\u2019t far below the 180,000 median prediction of economists surveyed by Bloomberg, there was a downward revision of 74,000 jobs to the previous two months\u2019 reports. The government said June payrolls grew by only 172,000, rather than 188,000; July\u2019s grew by only 102,000, instead of 162,000. In other words, while employment did grow in August, it was from a substantially lower starting point than previously believed.\r\nSome quick reactions from observers:\r\nContinue reading here.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=1EC88B56-D4D7-4CD2-B6B9-74696CFF1C9D"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.6686730775982141, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}