read the whole thing, this is very puzzling. The unemplyment rate is being held down by enormous numbers of people no longer looking for work.
But since December 1990 the labor-force-to-population ratio has fallen by 1.2%--from 67.2% down to 66.0%. On net, a much larger than usual share of those who have lost jobs have stopped looking for work and so dropped out of the labor force. And the fact that they are no longer looking for work--and so are not counted as unemployed--is responsible for the fact that what is the smallest labor-market downturn of the past quarter-century using the measuring rod of the change in the unemployment rate is the largest labor-market downturn of the past quarter-century using the measuring rod of the change in the employment-to-population ratio.
and
The answer is that people are dropping out of the labor force. The BLS conducts a survey every month and asks about 60,000 households whether they are working, and if not, whether they are actively looking for work. The number of people who have responded that they are not working but are actually looking for work (and thus are technically unemployed) has fallen from about 9.2 million in June to 8.4 million in December. That’s good. Unfortunately, they apparently haven’t stopped working because they’ve found jobs, since the number of jobs in the US economy is still below where it was a year ago. (See the graph in this post to see what I'm talking about.) They’ve stopped working for some other reason.
employment and the labor force
The whole thread (31 posts)
- employment and the labor force
- Some more fun with statistics, or: where did those lost jobs all go?
- job creation has been slower than in almost any previous recovery, and wage growth has slowed to a crawl
- Did you even read my post?
- that always happens
- To reiterate: since January of 2001, America has created almost 690,000 jobs.
- Did you even read my post?
- I wonder how many illeagal immigrent jobs are being counted as well.
- job creation has been slower than in almost any previous recovery, and wage growth has slowed to a crawl
- Thats because many are now self-employed.
- Unfortunately, you seem to be correct. The employment rate (% of persons employed) has gone DOWN. This is very bad news. I don't see any recovery of jobs coming in the next few years.
- Some more fun with statistics, or: where did those lost jobs all go?