Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Friday that the nation’s improving unemployment rate actually means that “more and more Americans” have simply decided they don’t want to work anymore, “giving up and dropping out” of the job hunt.

“The unemployment rate, as you know, this year has come down very, very slowly, but it’s come down nonetheless,” he told voters in Abingdon, Virginia on Friday. “The reason it’s come down this year is primarily due to the fact that more and more people have just stopped looking for work. And if you just drop out of the workforce, if you just give up and say, ‘Look, I can’t go back to work. I’m just going to stay home.’ If you just drop out altogether, why, you’re no longer part of the employment statistics, so it looks like unemployment is getting better.”