Fact Check: White House Says Teenage Layabouts Drove the Labor Force Participation Rate Down

Claim: The decline in the labor force participation rate fell in July because fewer teenagers were working.

On Friday, after the Department of Labor’s jobs numbers showed that the labor force participation rate declined from 62.2 percent to 62.1 percent despite employers taking on 528,000 new workers, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that the decline as “about teenagers.”

Verdict: False.

While the teenage participation rate did fall in July from a seasonally adjusted 36.6 to 35.8, this represented a decline in the number of teenagers in the labor for...