a third of the metro areas have an unemployment rate of 5% or less.
Meaning two thirds do not, and the third that does has such unemployment numbers in the context of a big drop in labor participation. If more and more people aren't considered in the workforce, and so don't count as unemployed, then with any semi-decent growth at all its easy to get reduced unemployment rates.
Of course the participation rate is lower.......the boomers are retiring.
Which is not nearly enough to account for the lower participation rate, and that's even if you don't adjust for the fact that the retirement rate at any given age has gone down. The labor force participation rate for older Americans has been increasing, while the participation rate for younger Americans has gone down.
"Since 2003, those 65 years and older have seen their labor force participation rate rise from 13.99 percent to 18.7 percent. Those aged 55-64 saw their rate rise from 62.44 percent to 64.36 percent, a recent Americans for Limited Government (ALG) study of Bureau data from 2003-2013 shows. Meanwhile, participation by those aged 16-24 dropped from 61.56 percent in 2003 to 55.05 percent in 2013, and for those aged 25-54, it dropped from 82.98 percent to 82.01 percent...
...Specifically, 16-24 year olds failing to enter the labor force alone took 1.29 percent off the overall labor force participation rate. 25-54 year olds took a whopping 5.24 percent off the rate.
Meanwhile, these losses were offset by 55-64 year olds adding 2.39 percent back to the rate, and 65 years old and above adding another 1.13 percent.
By far the biggest contributors to the drop in participation were:
- that the population of those aged 25-54 increased by 1.12 million, and yet its labor force actually shrank by 1.53 million—a net loss of 2.65 million; and
- 2.53 million people aged 16-24 failed to enter the labor force compared to the rate in 2003..
In fact, if older Americans were not working longer — in the process adding 2.79 million to the civilian labor force — participation would be even lower than it already is at about 61.7 percent, instead of the 62.8 percent rate reported...
forbes.com |
