Today’s Chart of the Day comes from FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data), a fascinating website for charts of economic data. This chart shows the labor force participation rate for men going back to 1950. The percentage of able bodied men between the ages of 18-65 working or actively looking for work went from 87%+ in the 1950's to only 68% as of January 2023.
There are hundreds of factors that go into this figure, but no matter the cause, the results are troubling, especially since we are not even back to the pre-pandemic levels.