Wondering what constituted a "discouraged worker," I looked it up on a federal Bureau of Labor Statistics website. Here is what the BLS says:
Discouraged workers are a subset of persons marginally attached to the labor force. The marginally attached are those persons not in the labor force who want and are available for work, and who have looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months, but were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, discouraged workers were not currently looking for work specifically because they believed no jobs were available for them or there were none for which they would qualify.
Political correctness strikes again. I'd call these people "discouraged former workers" or "discouraged would-be workers." Go here to see a Los Angeles Times article about current workforce statistics.
