The labor force participation rate represents the number of people in the labor force as a percentage of the civilian noninstitutional population. In other words, the participation rate is the percentage of the population that is either working or actively looking for work. The labor force participation rate is calculated as: (Labor Force ÷ Civilian Noninstitutional Population) x 100.
The civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and older is the base population group, or universe, used for Current Population Survey (CPS) statistics published by BLS.
The civilian noninstitutional population excludes the following:
- active duty members of the U.S. Armed Forces
- people confined to, or living in, institutions or facilities such as prisons, jails, and other correctional institutions and detention centers, and residential care facilities such as skilled nursing homes
Included in the civilian noninstitutional population are citizens of foreign countries who reside in the United States but do not live on the premises of an embassy.
So the "civilian noninstitutional population" is actually even more meaningless than I thought. It includes elderly people not living in nursing homes, non-citizens, college students and even many high school students.
We shall agree on something fundamental -- "...the "civilian noninstitutional population" is actually even more meaningless than I thought. It includes elderly people not living in nursing homes, non-citizens, college students and even many high school students."
During the Covid "event" as I call it, I used such simple arithmetic to show that all the "official" hysteria was simple hysteria. Cutting through the "co-morbidities" and methods from the WHO to increase a diagnosis of a Covid death through all sorts of taxonomic tricks, the BLS -- and more specifically the government at many levels -- is inept, jargon-laden and confusing.
Would one have a simple range -- say 18 to 70 -- as a population against which to compare actual employment, an argument can be made.
For this reason, the "shadow stat" guys are working to earlier methodologies and taxonomies to show how full of malarkey much of the current "data" and pronouncements are.
They suggest that a truer unemplyment rate is circa 25%. Source: https://www.shadowstats.com/
And: https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts