There were 93,482,000 Americans not participating in the labor force in March, a decline of 206,000 individuals from the previous month, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Friday. Those not in the labor force represent individuals who do not have a job and did not actively seek one in the past four weeks.
Overall, the labor force participation rate, which is the percentage of the population who has a job or actively looked for one in the past month, improved slightly from 62.9 percent to 63 percent in March.
The unemployment rate increased from 4.9 percent to 5.0 percent in March. This measure does not account for those individuals who have dropped out of the labor force. The unemployment rate simply measures the percent of those who did not have a job but actively sought one over the month.
The "real" unemployment rate, otherwise known as the U-6 measure, was 9.8 percent, which increased from 9.7 percent it was in the previous month. Some Democrats such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen have said that this measure is more representative of the labor market because it accounts for discouraged workers and those working part time instead of full time for economic reasons.
There were 6,123,000 Americans working part-time in March, but not by choice. This number increased by 135,000 Americans from the previous month. According to the bureau, involuntary part-time workers are "persons who indicated that they would like to work full time but were working part time (1 to 34 hours) because of an economic reason, such as their hours were cut back or they were unable to find full-time jobs."