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Comment by aero142 | Hacker News Reader

Stop getting your economics reports from political news sources. "They don't count people who've stopped looking" is not a meaningful statement. There are many statistics that report this. Labor force participation rate is the one I always look at next to unemployment rate and gives a better overall picture.

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

In this case, I think you make a valid point. Why is the labor force participation rate not climbing back to 2008 levels?

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Scott Alexander gets deep into labor force participation rate in those post (with lots of good charts!): http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/02/19/technological-unemploym...

A sister-comment mentioned baby boomers-- there's a second index called prime age male labor force participation rate (PAMLFPR) that corrects for that by only looking at working-age men. We've gone down from 97% PAMLFPR in 1948 to 88% PAMLFPR in 2016.

Of course, I wonder if PAMLFPR is no longer a socially relevant statistic. After all, there are a lot more women in the workforce currently, and (slightly) more men staying home. It's not as good an indication of who really needs work as it once was.

If you are going to look at participation rates, I find its best to look at the age, gender and race breakdowns to understand which changes are cyclical and which ones are driven more by demographics and cultural changes.

https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force-particip...

For example, there have been huge upticks in 55+ labor participation rates and huge downtrend of teenager participation over the last 20 years.

I assume these stats are cumulative in terms of PT, FT, or a shared arrangement?

Still, feels odd to see the metrics begin at 16. While some people I know (myself included) had part time jobs at that point, most didn't. 21-22 seems like a more reasonable starting point, given time off for people who went to college - or 18 for people who didn't.

Seems like they should isolate these such that when they say "The unemployment rate is X and the participation rate is Y" they acknowledge most 16 y/o are not primary breadwinners.

A large part is demographics, and the drop was known for decades before it happened, as mentioned in papers from Census. FRED reports also explain this.

Another part is people staying in college longer (or going back to college) to get more education which is needed for a modern workforce, and the result of that is more lifetime earnings, not less.

A third part is many people are opting for one income, since many couples can now live on one income. More people moving from the middle class did so by moving up rather than down.

>A third part is many people are opting for one income, since many couples can now live on one income."

I beg to differ, its quite the opposite actually. More people are in debt compared to past. Not sure if that's what you mean by 'climbing up'

Here's two sources showing more people are climbing up from middle class rather than down [1,2]. There are plenty more you can find with a Google search.

[1] http://www.aei.org/publication/yes-the-us-middle-class-is-sh...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-middle-class-...

> More people moving from the middle class did so by moving up rather than down.

[Citation Needed]

Here's two [1,2]. There are plenty more you can find with a Google search.

[1] http://www.aei.org/publication/yes-the-us-middle-class-is-sh...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-middle-class-...

> Why is the labor force participation rate not climbing back to 2008 levels?

Probably because the boomers are 10 years older than in 2008?

Were the boomers more likely to participate per capita? Or did I misunderstand the statistic?

Older people are less likely to participate than normal, boomers are a population hump and America is a pretty ageist work place.

It’s not about being “political”. Unemployment has always been defined by the government as “people who are actively looking for work who can’t find a job”.

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