For me the middle class is that group of people in America that expends the most physical and mental energy to actually accomplish “WORK.” In May we learned that the unemployment rate had dropped from 6.7% to 6.3%. That’s good, right? The Wall Street Journal ran the optimistic headline Job Growth Gathers Strength.2 But noted were worrisome signs of “another exodus of workers from the labor force and persistently weak wages.” A more meaningful number is the Civilian Labor-Force Participation Rate (LFPR). In May it fell to its three-decade low of 62.8%. In other words, 37.2% of the U.S. population that wants to work cannot find a job as revealed in this FRED chart.3