This morning’s jobs report showed that the economy added a disappointing 38,000 jobs in May. While this number is depressed by the 35,000 Verizon workers who were striking during the reference period, even adding those workers back into the mix gives us a total number that’s lower than recent trends.

Payroll job growth has averaged only 116,000 jobs the past three months, and 150,000 this year so far. This is a noticeable slowdown compared to the growth in jobs last year (which averaged 229,000 per month). While the pace of job growth is expected to slow as the economy approaches full employment, May’s rate of growth was not even strong enough to keep up with growth in the working age population.

The unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent—typically a sign of a strengthening economy, but in this case, the fall is almost entirely due to would-be workers dropping out of the labor force. This is especially troubling for the prime-age workforce, those 25-54 years old (shown in the figure below). After hitting a low-point of 80.6 percent in September 2015, the prime-age labor force participation rate (LFPR) has been on the rise, reaching 81.4 percent in March. I expected the downward blip in April to be followed by a return to the recent upward trend. Unfortunately, it appears that the “blip” continued, with the LFPR falling 0.2 percentage points two months in a row down to 81.0 percent.

While the economy has otherwise been steadily improving, the prime-age labor force participation rate has far to go before even reaching its lowest point in the last two business cycles, let alone recovering to full employment. The Federal Reserve should certainly bear this in mind when it meets later this month and not be too quick to raise rates and slow the economy.