Millions of Americans do not want a job.

• Position: Economics - Brief Article

The creation of almost 1,500,000 jobs since January notwithstanding, the biggest factor that may be holding the unemployment rate down is the growing number of working-age people leaving the labor force, according to John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of the international outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., Chicago.

Unpublished data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that there are 21,343,000 25- to 54-year-olds not participating in the labor force (meaning they were not working or looking for work). Of those, 2,191,000 say they want a job, leaving 19,152,000 who presumably do not. "None of the 21,343,000 nonworking 25- to 54-year-olds were counted in the monthly unemployment figures--not even those who want a job--since they are not actively seeking employment," Challenger notes.

The most revealing trend, maintains Challenger, is that the number of people not in the labor force who do not want a job has grown by 256,000 since January when the figure stood at 18,896,000...