The labor force participation rate measures the share of the civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and older who are either employed or actively looking for work. People who are unemployed but have stopped looking for work are not counted as unemployed — they fall out of the labor force entirely. This is why the official unemployment rate can stay stable or even fall even as job conditions deteriorate: if enough discouraged workers give up searching, they disappear from the unemployment calculation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks the participation rate alongside the unemployment rate precisely because the two figures together give a more complete picture of labor market health than either does alone. A falling participation rate signals that workers are losing confidence in their ability to find employment.