Originally Posted by Buff

The statistic you want to look is not the unemployment rate, but rather the Labor Force Participation rate. That rate is published monthly by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and can be found right here: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

It represents the percent of Americans 16-years-old and older who are employed. As of February of this year, the rate stands at 63.9%, which is just about at a 30-year low, which is terrible. As can be seen in this graph, the rate peaked right about the time Bush took office for the first time and has been plummeting ever since.