I agree with most of what you say, but this:
for many years during the 'Seventies and 'Eighties the unemployment rate hovered around 5 to 5.5 per cent, just as it is today. Only in the late 'Nineties did it drop below 5 per cent.
Actually, the unemployment rate was above 5.5 percent, usually well above 5.5 percent, for the vast majority of that time. Unemployment was above 5.5 percent for the following periods:
Nov. 1970-August 1972 (22 consecutive months)
October 1972 (1 month)
September 1974-March 1988 (163 consecutive months)
May 1988 (1 month)
August 1988 (1 month)
That is a total of 188 months (out of a possible 240 months) in which the unemployment rate in the 70's and 80's was above its current level. In 108 of those months, the unemployment rate was 7.0 or above.
bls.gov has tools where charts covering these periods can be generated.
And it's not a matter of large numbers of people having "given up" and "left" the work force, either. The civilian labor force participation rate (the percentage of people 16 or older who are employed) is currently 66.0 percent. That number was slightly higher in many of the Clinton years, peaking at 67.3 percent, which is the highest it has ever been in U.S. history.
In the 1970's and 1980's, the labor force participation rate was lower than it is now for 18 out of the 20 years. In other words, back then the unemployment rate was usually much higher than it is now, even though fewer people (as a percentage of the over-16 population) were in the work force (more people, through discouragement or other reasons, had left or not entered the work force). |
