If nearly 40% of Americans aren’t working, what are they doing? (2015)

I can’t wait until we get enough Millenials in power to peg the retirement age to life expectancy.

It's fascinating that from the 1950s to the 1970s employment was hovering around 57%. Formal employment has actually increased 1970-2015 as workers in our economy became more productive. It's interesting this correlates to the decline in real median wage gains, which have plateaued since the 1970s.

It looks like it has been that way since the 1950s from your graph.

I think that's a faulty analysis. TFA does much better job separating things by age, comparing changes over time, and looking at evidence for the reason behind those changes.

For example, having the 16-25 labor participation rate decrease could be considered a good thing (maybe, it's debatable), but the increase in people on disability is usually a surefire indication of an economy not offering people on the margins a way to work. Most people on the "margin" for disability will work if the job market is good and will go on disability if it's bad.

I don't think everyone working 3 days will produce nearly as much output.

Soviets did have everybody work all 5 days, that didn't quite work for them economically.

I agree with a slight adjustment: i actually believe it is both robotic-type of automation, as well as, fewer people forced to do more than previous workers. I think if a company makes physical things or is moe under the blue collar type of output, then maybe the percent sways slightl more towards physical automata such as robots, but also might include the "less people doing more" aspect. Now, when the companies are more knowledge-based/white collar work, then the percents flip...but again, i think this is all nuanced, and no single form of automation prevails universally.

> ...The net result is that you end up with more roles that are senior level and less opportunities for entry level.

I've felt this has been a thing for almost two decades now...And, if you're right, (and my spidey sense/tingling feeling) has been confirmed, then it would be very scary! I wonder if the apprenticeship models that have been championed and succeeded in places like Germany, will eventually force our nation to adopt them, and veer away from the traditional (college-esque) route because there simply is too few entry level options now? I'm not saying the college or the apprenticeship route is best, or if there's even room for a hyrid, just pondering based on your hypothesis, which i actually, scarily agree with.

I agree. I think the coming change is much bigger than anyone is prepared to handle..

We are in a transitional period - the utopian endpoint of technology was always to perfect/automate so much that there is no need for humans to work (except on what you want to of course), but as we get closer we have no idea what society is supposed to look like in that world.

Politicians still promise jobs, the Fed targets employment, the entirety of society is built around the idea of working to make a living. Those ideas don't even necessarily make sense in a world of increasing automation - at some point if everything keeps getting 10x more efficient, there simply won't be enough jobs of any kind to go around.

It means a transition to an entirely different way of organizing society - we don't know what it will look like and its going to be a very bumpy ride.

If you think about it, on average people work less than a few percent of their life. Assuming a 40 hour work week, that means about 2/3rds of a working day you are not working. Factor in vacation, weekends, national holidays and basically you get to work for about 2/3rds of the year for about 1/3rd of the time. That's a bit over 20% of your time. You do that between when you finish studying until you retire for about 40-45 years give or take. The average age in a lot of countries is close to 80. So, an average productive life, would mean working maybe 10-15% of your time. It feels like more but you spend more time sleeping (33%, assuming a healthy 8 hour rest). Some of us of course work longer and harder. But we're talking averages here.

Now of course not everybody works and quite a few of us do things that arguably aren't that critical or important. There's actually quite a bit of busywork that really doesn't matter that much to anyone; including those paying for it. Companies regularly discover they can safely fire a few percent of their workforce when the time comes to scrape out some more efficiency to please shareholders. Most of us are not really not working at all most of the time, even if we are employed.

This is a big change from pre-industrial revolution life where you worked from early age until you were physically unable to do something useful, which was shortly before death, which for those that worked hard came pretty early on average.

This is not a problem because most of the things people did then are now done by machines.

Is this because the denominator for the unemployment rate (but not the employment rate) is specifically people looking for work?

I'm not sure this is that unintuitive once you know what unemployment means technically: the key aspect of the definition of unemployment is that to be unemployed you have to be actively searching for work. If more of your population is actively searching for work, as opposed to less, it stands to reason that more people might eventually find work.

In other words, it's probably much worse now...

>Even in 2015, surely they had spellcheck?

Well, eduction is a word, so it would have spelled ok.

"getting more education" is correct usage. Getting education and getting educated are two different things. People can get education without getting educated and vice versa.

I’m guessing many people on HN could afford a 2-3 year break from work (at least those without kids), but what is your plan for 20 years out?

Any income besides algo? How well does it perform?

I’ve struggled with the same transition. Do you have any trouble with feeling a lack of purpose? Restlessness?

Many days when I should be perfectly happy and content,instead I feel like I’m waiting for something to go wrong and piss me off. It feels really stupid to be anxious about nothing.

How do you plan to get back to work-force after the money you saved up run dry?

Majority of software engineers are able to save up for few years forth of expenses by not going into any major investments.

To give an example - I can stop working for 3 years now, but Ill have huge issues explaining that afterwards. And if I plan to build a house - there is no option for me to stop working for the next 10 years.

Not everyone is in so proviliged place.

I did the same, but I moved to Latin America, where its so cheap I can live off side hustle money. I can't imagine ever going back to work in the US or EU, that rat race is NOT worth it IMHO. I'd rather stay right here and make 20% what I made there and live just as comfortably, but with basically all my free time intact.

Note in the last election a couple of candidates would have said the the US unemployment rate was 56%, not 11%. They counted everyone who wasnt working as unemployed, including 1 year olds and 90 year olds.

The labor force participation rate is a measure of an economy’s active workforce. The formula for the number is the sum of all workers who are employed or actively seeking employment divided by the total noninstitutionalized, civilian working-age population.

They already exclude children from that number. Except if you mean 18 and over 'children'.