Ok, so let me get this right. You are not counted as part of the population until you are 16....really?
Right. For Labor Force Statistics only the Adult Civilian Non-Institutional Population is used. Excluded are all groups that face restrictions to entry/exit to/from the Labor Market.
See, the round and round is what I mean by logic defect among liberals.
No, I don't. Why would children, prisoners, people in a mental institute or old age home etc whose ability to work, not work or change jobs is not a factor of the labor market be relevant in analyzing the labor market? "Liberal" has nothing to do with it (I'm not a liberal).
So the numbers he quoted were close enough to point out the absurdity of claiming that baby boomers were responsible for the MASSIVE drop in the Labor Participation Rate.
It's not absurd, it's just not as big a factor as Ed claims. The Labor Force Participation Rate is the Labor Force as a percent of the Population. We can't directly measure retirees, but approximating with the age group of 65 years and older, they've added a (slightly) larger percent to the denominator than to the numerator, which means a downward push.
Which is NOT the same as the labor force.
Well, yeah...one is a level and the other a percentage. You seem to be thinking of some other distinction, though. Not sure what it is.
And by the way, the Labor Participation Rate is NOT the same as the labor force. Retirees are REMOVED from calculations for total labor force used to calculate unemployment and employment rates.
No they're not, except in the sense that they're neither working nor looking for work. They're still in the survey and still part of the population.
[qutoe] AS are those who may be out of work and do not ACTIVELY seek employment. You know, the 250-300,000 a month who are dropping out. These are people who are NOT tracked because they can not be tracked by the BLS.[/quote] Why do you think they can't be tracked? They're still in the population. When someone retires, they're leaving the labor force. They were employed but now they're not, and since they're not looking for work, they're not unemployed either and therefore now in the category of Not in the Labor Force.
So the labor force is NOT the labor force and it has virtually NOTHING to do with the Labor Force Participation Rate...which IS tracked by the BLS and DOES include retirees.
The Labor Force is Employed and Unemployed. Since retirees, full time students, housewives, etc are neither, then they're Not in the Labor Force, but still in the Population. It's not that they're not tracked, it's that they don't meet the definition. So for Labor Force participation, retirees will be part of the denominator and not part of the numerator.
But you ARE right about one thing. Being a conservative, I probably should have said 7 million who have dropped out since that is the conservative estimate by experts. The 10 million I used was the middle of the road one. The high end estimates are 12 to 14 million who have given up.
There's a big difference between leaving the labor force and "giving up."
Someone retires, they've left the labor force but not given up.
Someone quits their job to look after the kids, they've left the labor force but not given up.
Someone stops looking for work to go back to school full time, they've left the labor force but not given up.
So how many have given up?
Table A-38 breaks down those not in the Labor Force.
What we're interested in here is the number of people who say they want a job and have looked for work in the last year (but not the last 4 weeks, which would have made them Unemployed). That's at 3,219,000 who have left the labor force in the last year, did look for work but stopped, and say they still want to work.
But...658,000 of them say they couldn't have started work if offered a job. So we can't count them as "given up" and we're down to 2,561,000 people who are willing and able to work, did look but stopped.
Look at the reasons. "Discouraged" is defined as those who quit looking "for reasons such as thinks no work available, could not find work, lacks schooling or training, employer thinks too young or old, and other types of discrimination." These are the people who have "given up."
That's only 844,000. The rest stopped looking (not "given up" but stopped) for various personal reasons. Someone whose parents were sick and stops looking for work to look after them hasn't "given up," they chose to stop working for a more important priority.
They're now classified as "Marginally Attached" because whatever reason they stopped looking is gone and they can work now, just haven't started looking yet.
But "given up?" That's under a million.