There were 94,184,000 Americans not participating in the labor force in September, a decline of 201,000 people from the previous month, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday.
The bureau counts those not in the labor force as people who do not have a job and did not actively seek one in the past four weeks.
The labor force participation rate, which is the percentage of the population that has a job or actively looked for one in the past month, increased from 62.8 percent in August to 62.9 percent in September.
The unemployment rate for all Americans increased to 5.0 percent after remaining steady at 4.9 percent in August. This measure does not account for those individuals who have dropped out of the labor force and simply measures the percent of those who did not have a job but actively sought one over the month.
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