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Labor force participation rate lowest since the 1970s.. true but from the end of W.W.II through 1976 the rate was lower than that.

From BLS

Civilian noninstitutional population: Persons 16 years of age and older residing in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, who are not inmates of institutions (e.g., penal and mental facilities, homes for the aged), and who are not on active duty in the Armed Forces.
Civilian labor force: All persons in the civilian noninstitutional population classified as either employed or unemployed. [I assume part-time is counted.]

I can see following W.W.II that labor force participation would shrink.

Biggest factor would be females not in the labor force. Can you imagine that.. one spouse working was enough to support a family and pay off the mortgage -- it wasn't just in the movies.

Bureau of Labor Statistics

These tables can be obtained here: go to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey (CPS). Requires Java. Make your selections. I asked for quarterly data and took the fourth (or last available) quarter annualized data from each table.

Leaving the work force? Is that a kind of leakage?

Commenting on the "jobless" recovery an Oct 17th 2003 article in Morgan Stanley's Global Stephen Roach wrote of "Imported Productivity" and "income leakage" vis-à-vis the business cycle recovery (the one starting in late 2001) compared to recoveries of the past.

"The gap between the current cycle and the norm of earlier cycles works out to a shortfall of about $320 billion in real terms, or 4.4% of the current level of real disposable personal income...
"Sourcing demand through low-cost, offshore labor input has become an increasingly important tactic to enhance the operating efficiency of US businesses... the American workforce is not sharing the benefits."

Scream "Protectionist!" all you want but huge numbers of jobs going off shore and 24 million foreign workers here should be considered.

Bu that does not let Obama off the hook.

If you are willing to look around a wall of numbers you can see that under Obama the economy is even worse than "the mess Bush left." Though some of the millions of jobs lost while our health care system destruction had priority some of those jobs have been replaced with part-time and temp jobs. Compare current president and past presidents using federal government economic data.