Two years into the economic recovery labor force participation has hit a new low.

The labor force participation rate, the share of Americans who are working or looking for jobs, declined to 63.9% in July from 64.1% a month earlier, the Labor Department said Friday. July’s numbers were a new low for the measure, which has dropped during the recession and slow recovery to its lowest percentage since the early 1980s.

The employment-population ratio, the share of the working-age population that is employed, showed a similar trend. It, ticked down to 58.1% from 58.2% in June, another new low for this downturn.

“July 1983–a time when American feminism was only halfway born–was the last time we saw an employment-to-population ratio this low,” Brad DeLong, a University of California, Berkeley, economist wrote Friday.

Declining participation carries a toll – both for the sidelined workers and for the entire economy.

When participation falls it’s an indication that Americans have grown discouraged about their chances of finding jobs and have given up looking. That’s a particular concern during this downturn when long-term unemployment has been prevalent.

Nearly 6.2 million Americans were out of work for more than six months in July and the median length of a spell of unemployment was 21.2 weeks. Those who have been out of the job market for long periods commonly cite problems with anxiety and depression and research has shown lasting spells of joblessness can reduce a worker’s lifespan.

A drop in participation is bad for the economy because the economy loses the productivity that would have come from those sidelined workers. Jobless Americans also tend turn to programs such as Social Security disability, and often end up remaining on it for the rest of their lives, which comes at a cost to the federal government.

Falling labor force participation does make the official unemployment rate fall: With fewer Americans searching for jobs, the rate can fall even amid slow job creation. A broader measure of unemployment, which includes those who want to work but have given up looking, stood at 16.1% in July.