Posted on 10/06/2014 10:42:21 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
America's jobs picture is seeing huge improvement, with robust numbers that are giving investors confidence in the economy. The U.S. added 248,000 jobs last month, bringing the unemployment rate below 6 percent.
But one part of that picture is still a puzzle: People continue to stop looking for work, and in doing so, are dropping out of the labor pool. In fact, the participation rate in the labor force has fallen to 62.7 percent -- its lowest level since early 1978.
How can this be? As the job market heats up and the unemployment rate falls, wouldn't that mean more people are looking for work, not less?
"The decline is without precedent," Bob Funk, chief executive of global staffing company Express Employment Professionals, told CBS MoneyWatch. Government tracking of employment statistics go back to 1948, he said, "and a decline like this has never happened since then."
There's no clear reason why people are leaving the workforce, and the issue has ignited a fierce debate among economists. One trend that they seem to agree on? About half of the decline is due to baby boomers entering retirement years.
The other half of decline gets a little fuzzy. Funk notes that some portion of the unemployed either don't want to work or don't think they can find a job. His company commissioned a poll of unemployed in May, he said, and found that 47 percent have completely given up looking for work. "That's a real problem," he said.
The labor force participation rate was around 66 percent of the population in 2007 before falling to 62.7 percent.
Some economists say the expansion of food stamp and disability programs are keeping people out of the labor pool. Others says that young people are dropping out, partly because more are going to college
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
RE: 13 states now have benefits from the federal government and state programs that equal or better the average income for working at a job.
Off the top of your head, can you name a few or all of them?
I bet California and Illinois are in the 13.
Because it’s Summertime and the living is eeeeeeeeeasy....
oh wait.
lol
It’s good to get unemployment and welfare in the summer. Life is good!
I remember Hawaii was #1. And the rest were mostly liberal blue states. I think i saved that doc. somewhere. I’ll have a look.
Yeah, well, we’re self-employed capitalists and we pay taxes, fees, licensing,permits, practice insurance, etc, etc. If I thought we could get away with it, I’d go underground, too.
But we are Caucasian Midwesterners, older, monogamous and so, we pay more than a fair share, IMO.
Did you miss the sarcasm there?
The implication was that the only bad thing about underground economies, to our “benevolent overlords”, is that it isn’t taxed.
I got it. I’m just in a grumpy mood and it’s a sore topic for me. Sorry if it spilled over onto you or anyone else.
It's quite alright — I completely understand and it's a bit of a sore topic for me, too.
I've been unemployed/severely-underemployed for more than 2 years — I'm pretty discouraged about finding a good job (my degree is a prime target for the STEM/H1B-visa scam), and if I do get one I'll be facing a lot of taxes, in addition to probably getting taken advantage of… so that's some disincentive.
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