Posted on 06/16/2018 5:41:18 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
With unemployment at 3.8 percent, its lowest level in many years, the labor market seems healthy.
But that number hides a perplexing anomaly: The percentage of men who are neither working nor looking for work has risen substantially over the past several decades.
The issue, in economist’s jargon, is labor force participation. When the Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys households, every adult is put into one of three categories. Those who have a job are employed. Those who are not working but are searching for a job are unemployed. Those who are neither working nor looking for work are counted as out of the labor force.
This last group is ignored when calculating the unemployment rate. The presumption is that if a person without a job isn’t looking for one, then he or she doesn’t want one, and the joblessness is not a problem. But is that really accurate?
The data show some striking changes over time. Among women, the share out of the labor force has fallen from 66 percent in 1950 to 43 percent today. That is not surprising in light of changing social norms and the greater career opportunities now open to women.
Men, however, exhibit the opposite long-term trend. In 1950, 14 percent of men were out of the labor force. Today, that figure stands at 31 percent.
Some of this change is easy to explain. People now spend more years in school, delaying their start of work. In addition, as life expectancy rises, people have longer retirements. A man retiring at age 65 in 1950 could expect to live another 13 years. Today, a man retiring at that age has an average retirement of 18 years.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They’ve been claiming black unemployment is largely non-existant.
bump for later
Your comment on the deadbeat Dad law is spot on. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions laid by politicians of low moral fiber.
It always has been a waste of time, but you can thank the government for making it a requirement, because it didn’t know what else to do with millions of men who are suddenly coming home from the war with nothing to do. The college diploma helped slow their entry into the workplace to help absorb their numbers. That’s about the only worth it had at the time.
Unless you really need a specialized skill from the getgo on par with a brain surgeon or rocket scientist where one needs to have a massive amount of information memorized, most people could learn their job skills on the job in about the same time it took to learn it in school.
People who can work for $8/hr.
RE:Are men who are retired and receiving a pension or Social Security retirement benefits considered “out of the labor force?”
As I understand it, the answer is “Yes”, and so are kids who are still in college and not working.
That is why the labor force participation rate is for me, also an inaccurate measure of how good or dire the job market it.
Heck if I wanted to increase the labor force participation rate, I would have to tell my uncles and aunt (in their mid 70’s ) to get off their butts and go back to work. How ridiculous is that?
It is very much like our inflation rate (CPI), which does not include the price of real estate, energy, college cost, etc. Taxes are also not included.
See here:
Yup, retired house dad here. Our house is cleaner and less grumpy.
As I recall, About 7M in Jan 2009. About 11M in Jun 2011.
How much more did it grow?
I think we wound up losing about 9 million jobs.
What about women, ever meet a 58 year old getting welfare, and not having ever worked and having lived with her parents all of her life? And she thinks she is God’s gift to the universe just like her father who has been on psychological disability for 50 years! This government is out of control!
Men are going galt, the workplace is far more hostle towards them, many areas have done a lot of work to get rid of men working in them.
It reminds of of the quote from fight club that Brad Pitt used and maybe that’s it, men are getting tired of having to slave at some stupid job to buy shit they don’t need.
MGTOW LOL.
DINGDINGDING!
And how is that different than the prevailing cultural postulate that everything bad done to or by women is REALLY because of men?
It’s not NEARLY as hard as it’s portrayed; just hold fast to the adage “if it walks like a duck...etc,” and it all will become clear.
My wife let me know YEARS ago, when I retire she’s putting me to work as a handyman.
The high powered professional women she knows are almost always single by middle age, and will pay in BLOOD to get someone to do the typical mundane chores for which THEY are not trained, and would normally be done by an even marginally competent husband.
It’s like Paul Harvey used to say: “Never before could someone become so successful on so little.”
YOU try telling a woman that she walks like a duck...
Candy bars are 10 - 20 X what they were when I wuz a kid.
Inflation is not benign, even at 1%.
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