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>The gold standard metric is labor participation rate of white men over 20

"gold standard"... according to whom? Economists? Internet commentators? White nationalists?

Economists, of course - the confounder of discrimination is absent here. Recall: if something appears weird in the US, it's usually due to slavery.

>Economists, of course

For what? "labor participation rate" or "labor participation rate of white men over 20"? The former is regularly cited, but the latter seems like a contrived statistic to make a point.

It’s not a contrived statistic. It’s a way to look at the fundamentals of the economy in a way that’s not confounded by the distinct effects of immigration, etc.

But it is confounded by demographic changes… namely the aging population.

That's skewed by the number of retirees, which naturally increases in an aging population like white US men.

That's because there are fewer white men because white men (and women) are the ones that are returning from the Baby Boomer era. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1T9dv&heig...