the.com/labor force

means The total count of people who are either employed or actively seeking employment, used to calculate things like the unemployment rate.

from A straightforward compound of 'labor' (from the Latin 'labor,' meaning toil or hardship) and 'force' (from Latin 'fortis,' strong — in the sense of a body of people mustered for a task, like a 'police force' or 'workforce'). The economic sense of 'labor force' as a measurable statistical category is a modern development, tied to 20th-century efforts by governments and economists to quantify employment and unemployment systematically.