Based upon what I’m seeing from my acquaintances, the labor participation rate is dropping dramatically because of things like long-term unemployment making people simply unable to get back into the job market on one hand, long-term unemployment insurance making people unwilling to get back into the job market when they’ve made the adjustments to be able to live on unemployment, things like another almost 8,000,000 people signed up for disability in the last five years compared to about 3 million before that, and even more people moving in together.
Yeah there is a chart somewhere that shows the states where government “benefits” are more than the median salaries in those states. It’s pretty shocking. I personally know several people who stay on “benefits” instead of trying to get a job.