100 Million Americans Not Working As Workforce Shrinks

Investors Busniness Daily ^ | 07/08/2015 | STEPHEN MOORE

[expat_panama]

Is America hard at work? Or hardly working? I ask this because 430,000 Americans of working age (16 and older) dropped out of the workforce in June.

Over the last year, only 1.3 million of working age have entered the workforce, even as the population of this same demographic increased by more than 2.8 million. Just over 1 million members of this group found jobs. That's right — of the new additions to the working age population, less than four in 10 found jobs.

The newspapers touted the reduction in the unemployment rate to 5.3% as a cause for celebration. Yet for every three Americans added to the working age population (16 and older), only around one new job (1.07) has been created under Obama. At this pace, America will soon officially have a zero unemployment rate — but only be because no one will be looking for work.

Here's the story the media didn't report: More than 100 million Americans over 16 are not working. Usually when the economy picks up, workers who have been laid off stampede back into the workforce to earn a paycheck. Now we have a better job market with fewer workers.

This is partially explained by baby boomers retiring. But the largest reduction in the workforce has been among the millennials. Today the labor force participation rate for the 16 to 24 age group is 55.1%, down from 60.8% a decade ago and more than 66% back in the late 1990s. We're headed toward becoming Greece, where half the young people don't work.

No one knows for sure why the labor force has shrunk so much under Obama. But it's a good bet policy mistakes have played a big role. Minimum wage increases are pricing the young out of the workforce. Welfare programs are...

[expat_panama]

Not sure how they get the 100M number, Rush keeps saying ninety something but when I minus the employed from the over-16 I get 109M.  Any way you cut it, the problem's not demographics or any of that cr@p.  This is something that happened all at once w/ the '08 election.

[rktman]

Maybe that’s what jebby boy means by people working more hours. To make up for the few people that are still not working.(you know eek-0-nomik recovery) Or something. Jeb, go back to My-am-uh and leave us alone. You ain’t the guy. Sorry to tell you. Well, not really.

[From The Deer Stand]

But, wow, the Ozero Adminstration says, we have a low unemployment rate.

[GreatRoad]

Americans need not apply, especially where I live.

[Organic Panic]

Just think how great it will be when 200 million are out of the workforce. Unemployment rates will appear awesome.

[expat_panama]

Yeah, crash yesterday w/ stocks slamming down to lows from the day before, while metals settled down to tried and true support levels (gold'n'silver now at $1,165.83 and $15.46).  Hey, forget that stuff, right now futures are +1.10% for stocks and +0.80% for metals.  All better now.

 

[rktman]

We do, we do. There are only 2 people in our house that aren’t working. That would be both of us. But it’s our choice. :>}

[expat_panama]

when 200 million are out of the workforce. Unemployment rates will appear awesome.

Eventually the idea is 100% employment, and then America's last employee can turn the lights off when he leaves....

[jsanders2001]

[palmer]

The newspapers touted the reduction in the unemployment rate to 5.3% as a cause for celebration.

When the unemployment rate ticked up a couple months ago I was listening to NPR. They explained that the uptick was actually good news because more Americans were entering the work force. It's all good news until we get a Pub President.

[MNDude]

It seems that automation and increase of productivity has made it too easy for there to be so many unproductive people in society.

[jsanders2001]

> Just think how great it will be when 200 million are out of the workforce. Unemployment rates will appear awesome.

It’ll be great. None of us will have to work anymore and we can just draw benefits and freebies while we watch the government collapse under its own weight as it runs out of money. THEN the politicians will come back to the middle class that they spanked the hell out of the last 7 years and beg them to go back to work so the gibsmedats won’t riot and loot the WH.

[Skooz]

bump for later

[GailA]

And it shrinks 40K more with in 2 yrs as 0 destroys our Military to pre WW1 levels.

Pigeon Forge, TN is looking for workers mostly LOW paid retail shops type work, per my sister who lives near there. Town is booming for some reason, and it’s not just Dollywood.
They need motel cleaning staff that comes at $10 an hr where she works.

[GailA]

Here's another one you might like.

RINO

[jsanders2001]

Don’t care for Jeb or any of the RINOs.

[RipSawyer]

Even the rate that they claim is not what USED TO BE called a low unemployment rate, fifty years ago six percent was considered a very HIGH unemployment but even when it was reported at six percent almost anyone who wanted to work was working and any high school graduate who wanted to work could make a living. Now they claim less than six percent and there are very few jobs worth having, college graduates are taking jobs that high school graduates would have sneered at fifty years ago, we have forty year old university graduates depending on parents for a living. This is, in reality, a full blown DEPRESSION, worse in many ways than the thirties and only sustainable until now because of the automation that has pushed productivity so high. It cannot be sustained forever though. Some speak of a future in which robots will do all the work and people will live off their government benefits which will be provided to everyone even if they have never worked a day. At first it sounds plausible but when I take human nature into account there is no way I can imagine this working in the long run.

I keep seeing comments on FR to the effect that minimum wage rates are keeping people from entering the work force. I don’t believe in the minimum wage concept at all but at the same time the current federal minimum of $7.25 seems laughable, if we are going to have a minimum why one so low? It does not even come close to matching the 1963 minimum of $1.25 in actual purchasing power for the necessities of life. $1.25 back then would buy lunch for two in this area, $7.25 will hardly buy lunch for one now. I think the current federal minimum has little to do with the problem.

[Koracan]

...More than 100 million Americans over 16 are not working...

Cheaper Robots, Fewer Workers....

Robots will replace fast-food workers...

A Chinese company is replacing 90% of its workers with robots....

....Experts predict that one-third of jobs will be replaced by software, robots, and smart machines by 2025 To be sure, technological progress has always displaced workers. But it also has created new opportunities for human employment, at an even a faster rate. This time, things may be very different – especially as the Internet of Things takes the human factor out of so many transactions and decisions. The “Second Economy” (the term used by economist Brian Arthur to describe the portion of the economy where computers transact business only with other computers) is upon us. It is, quite simply, the virtual economy, and one of its main byproducts is the replacement of workers with intelligent machines powered by sophisticated code.

.....And here is the even more sobering news: Arthur speculates that in a little more than ten years, 2025, this Second Economy may be as large as the original “first” economy was in 1995 – about $7.6 trillion. If the Second Economy does achieve that rate of growth, it will be replacing the work of approximately 100 million workers. To put that number in perspective, the current total employed civilian labor force today is 146 million. A sizeable fraction of those replaced jobs will be made up by new ones in the Second Economy. But not all of them. Left behind may be as many as 40 million citizens of no economic value in the U.S alone. The dislocations will be profound....

[george76]

according to economist David Stockman the real unemployment rate in America is closer to 42.9%.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/06/federal-reserve-vice-chairman-says-economy-is-nearing-full-unemployment-real-unemployment-closer-to-42-9/

[Grampa Dave]

Praeto, a long time ago came up with a the 20/80 principle/rule/production observation.

Applied to our working population, 20% of the workers produce 80% of the results.

Maybe we are heading to that reality re our work force as a percent of the population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle