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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (844091)	3/22/2015 7:27:59 AM
From: Alighieri	2 Recommendations Recommended By Mongo2116 zax Respond to of 1578510

It took SIX FULL YEARS to start seeing signs reasonable economic growth and even today, although we've seen a 4-point drop in unemployment from the worst of it, labor force participation has dropped by around the same amount, meaning unemployment is essentially around 10%, comparatively, today. You guys have made hay out of this, but LFPR is not a new phenomenon as the chart clearly shows. While it is true that the GREAT RECESSION caused an acceleration, changing demographics and long term trends far more significant long term factors. 1. An important point of clarification: The civilian labor force participation rate (LFPR) is calculated by the BLS as the Civilian Labor Force (employed + unemployed) divided by the Civilian Noninstitutional Population (16 years and over), and not by the working age population as both the WSJ and IBD report. This can be verified by the current BLS employment report, which calculates the April Labor Force Participation Rate of 63.6% as 154,365 (labor force) DIVIDED BY 242,784,000 (TOTAL POPULATION, not divided by working-age population). 2. One reason that the LFPR can be going down over time is that the civilian population can be increasing relative to the labor force, and that's exactly what has been happening to the Male Labor Force Participation Rate, since at least 1948 (see third chart above). From a post-war high of 87.4% in 1949, the male LFPR has been consistently declining and reached a low of 70% in April. Perhaps the decline accelerated in recent years, and the graph would indicate that's the case, but the decline in male LFPR is part of long-term, secular demographic trend that has been going on since the 1940s, and has been declining even during all economic expansions since WWII. Reason? Increasing life expectancy over time will lead to increases in the adult population relative to men in the labor force. 3. As the bottom chart helps illustrate, the dramatic increase in female LFPR from 50% to 60% between 1980 and 2000 more than offset the 2.5% decline in male LFPR during that period, from 77.5% to 75%, causing the overall LFPR to increase. The female LFPR peaked at 60.3% in 2000, and was starting to decline slightly even during the 2002-2007 expansion, again probably because of increased life expectancy leading to greater increases in population relative to the labor force. 4. The third chart also shows that the "sad trend" since 2007 of those counted as "not in the labor force" referred to by Zero Hedge is really just a continuation of a long-term demographic trend going back to at least 1975 (first year BLS has data available). Again, this is probably just a statistical reality resulting from increased life expectancy and an aging population. Bottom Line: The overall LFPR was in decline after peaking in 2000 reflecting long-term demographic trends even during the expansion of 2002-2007, and probably would have continued to decline even without the Great Recession. Although it's certainly likely that the Great Recession accelerated the decline since 2007, it's important to realize with increased life expectancy, we can expect continued increases over time in those counted as "not in the labor force" and a continuation of the decline in the LFPR that started in 2000. That, of course, was nonsense -- having worked with many, many people who were starting businesses, never once have I heard of health insurance being a factor. Never. You REALLY have to expand your views beyond observations based on your immediate surroundings...it really keeps you very limited...furthermore, stop passing judgments based on a couple of years of a law that is clearly intended to take full effect over many years. Al