Meaning: Exhausted. Synonyms: jaded; wearied. Context example: my father's words had left me jaded and depressed. Similar: tired (depleted of strength or energy)
Text Size. One of the many startling results in Friday's unemployment report for June was how few American adults are currently employed. Even though the unemployment rate is technically 9.2%, the employment-population ratio fell to 58.2%, matching its recession low. But it might help to put this number into perspective: just how bad is it?
The problem has been building for a long time. The percentage of prime-aged men in the U.S. workforce â those either with a job or actively looking for one â peaked at 97.9% in 1954. But since the mid-1960s, the labor force participation rate for those men has steadily declined.