[Positive]

"It should reflect percentage of workforce not total population."

you are correct, I'm just too busy to do the research to find out what the "workforce" represents as a percentage of the population.

My guess is that the workforce was a smaller percentage of the population in 1945 than it is now because of more single income families then.

[TigersEye]

I wasn't suggesting you do that work, just so you know. I appreciate your input as it is.

You bring up yet another factor that needs to be considered to make a fair comparison. The demographics of the work force. That made me think about how much bigger the agricultural sector used to be and I don't think self-employed farmers and ranchers were counted in employment figures then. I have seen the point made that the self-employed are not counted today which is a much larger part of the white collar sector today.

Making comparisons to sixty years ago is a rather complicated project.