U.S. jobs market dropouts increasingly likely to stay out

A growing number of Americans quitting the labor force are likely gone for good, offering a cautionary note to the Federal Reserve as it tries to gauge how tight the jobs market is and how quickly to raise interest rates. For a long time, data suggested a significant portion of the decrease in labor force participation was because many job seekers had grown frustrated with their search and had given up looking. "The data suggest that the recent exits from the labor force have been more voluntary in nature than was the case in 2009, when the economy was weak and job prospects were dire," said Omair Sharif, senior economist at RBS in Stamford, Connecticut. In contrast, between 2007 and 2010, retirees made up a quarter of the six million people who left the labor force, while 18 percent were classified as disabled.

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