When President Obama took office in January 2009, 80,529,000 Americans were not participating in the labor force; since then, 14,179,000 Americans have left the workforce -- some of them retiring and some just quitting because they can't find work.

"By almost every economic measure, America is better off than when I came here at the beginning of my presidency," President Obama told the people of Elkhart, Indiana three days ago. "We cut unemployment in half, years before a lot of economists thought we would."

The unemployment rate in May dropped to 4.7 percent, BLS reported, less than half of its Obama-era high of 10 percent in October 2009.

But the labor force participation rate has deteriorated over Obama's two terms.