More Than 1 Million Americans Have Left the Workforce in the Past Year. Here’s What’s Going On

The American workforce is shrinking, and the decline is becoming difficult to dismiss as just another monthly fluctuation in the jobs data.More than 1 million people have disappeared from the U.S. labor force over the past year, while the share of Americans working or actively looking for work has fallen to its lowest level since the aftermath of the pandemic.The decline is being driven by several forces hitting at once: millions of baby boomers reaching retirement age, fewer younger workers coming behind them, tighter immigration, and a difficult hiring market that may be convincing some frustrated job seekers to simply...