- Joined
- Oct 12, 2009
- Messages
- 23,909
- Reaction score
- 11,003
- Location
- New Jersey
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Libertarian - Right
News from The Associated PressAP said:WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. employers added a solid 223,000 jobs in June, and the unemployment rate fell to 5.3 percent, a seven-year low. But wages failed to budge, and other barometers of the job market paint a mixed picture. The unemployment rate fell from 5.5 percent in May, the Labor Department said Thursday. But the rate fell mostly because many people out of work gave up on their job searches and were no longer counted as unemployed. In addition, the percentage of Americans working or looking for work fell to a 38-year low, a possible sign of more discouraged job seekers. And employers added 60,000 fewer jobs in April and May combined than the government had previously estimated.
The figures capture the persistently uneven nature of the job market's recovery from the Great Recession. More people had begun looking for work in May, yet all those gains were reversed in June. And wages, which had shown signs of finally rising earlier this year, have now stalled.
CSN said:(CNSNews.com) - A record 93,626,000 Americans 16 or older did not participate in the nation’s labor force in June, as the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.6 percent, a 38-year low, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In June, according to BLS, the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population, consisting of all people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, hit 250,663,000. Of those, 157,037,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job or actively seeking one.
News from The Associated Press
Record 93,626,000 Americans Not in Labor Force; Participation Rate Declines to 62.6%
So is this good news, bad news, mediocre news or something else?
News from The Associated Press
Record 93,626,000 Americans Not in Labor Force; Participation Rate Declines to 62.6%
So is this good news, bad news, mediocre news or something else?
Yeah, but have they accounted for population increasing, not just aging? Our population is on the rise.Interesting thread. It motivated me to look up some articles on the labor participation rate because it isn't something I think about too often. I thought the following was an informative article on the subject:
"The US labor force participation rate has fallen by about three percentage points since the Great Recession. Of that decline, Barclays thinks two points are due to population aging. The rest it blames on less participation within various age groups. Now overall, the US still has participation rates higher than Germany, Japan, and UK — the other large, advanced economies Barclays examines in a new report. But US participation dropped a lot more than those nations between 2005 and 2014. And it has particularly dropped a lot for working-age Americans versus that age group in other nations.
The difference is more notable among women:
The most jarring nugget was that only the US saw a decline in the prime working-age female participation over the two last decades. …
US female participation peaked in the mid-90′s and has since been trending downwards, while in Germany, Japan, and the UK the rate continued to inch higher."
There's Low Labor Force Participation Because Long Term Unemployment Has Risen - Forbes
If you are looking at the system as a whole, you want some people unemployed so that they can be employed to increase production. What the exact amount is I don't know. I just wanted to put that out there for consideration.
So get used to these monthly reports just like this one. Its only going to get worse over the next decade or two and three until we face the changing realities and adapt to them.
While I agree with almost everything you wrote above that quote, I think your conclusion overlooks what a lot of habitual critics of this economy avoid mentioning: the voluntary removal from the work force of about 4 million boomers retiring per year. With our low birth rate, we're going to see a decrease in the working age population over the next few decades which might be offset by the ability of businesses to improve productivity. But to do that we need to have workers who are well educated/trained to do the types of jobs the future economy needs. Many job openings even go unfilled today because employers are not finding the type of skilled workers they need. This country is behind on providing an educational system that provides that education and training. We're still using an idea born in the 19th century that all kids have to go through the same educational pipeline instead of beginning at the earliest of school ages trying to sort kids out by inclination and talents to an education that they can use.
Yeah, but have they accounted for population increasing, not just aging? Our population is on the rise.
News from The Associated Press
Record 93,626,000 Americans Not in Labor Force; Participation Rate Declines to 62.6%
So is this good news, bad news, mediocre news or something else?
Exactly!I suspect this is good news - of a kind - and probably the stuff we should get used to hearing in "good times". The problem of the next fifty years will be what to do with an economy where large numbers of people are simply not needed to work in that same economy. When we went from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy there was an increase in jobs - in the USA so much so that we had to import tens of millions of new workers to fill that need. There were no loss of jobs - but rather a gain in jobs and wages.
Transitioning from an industry economy to a service and technological economy leaves large numbers of people behind.
Today, we have to face reality that the guy with an IQ of 85 who got home from WW2 or Korea and got a union job in a factory and lived a solid middle class life for the next forty years is simply not going to be the scenario for people today. Today, if that same person can say welcome to walk mart or do you want fried with that order and make minimum wage for thirty hours a week -= that is the new reality for tens of millions. And you cannot live that same solid middle class life on that sort of existence.
So get used to these monthly reports just like this one. Its only going to get worse over the next decade or two and three until we face the changing realities and adapt to them.
Good news...labor force participation has been dropping for a long time, before Obama took office. It's the aging of our population. The financial hit and sluggish economy has accelerated the trend but the labor force participation the country had when boomers where of working age and before people started living longer and going to school longer isn't going to be the norm anymore.
Overall, we're adding jobs which is a positive.
As for wages, job growth has to happen before wages start going up. That's to be expected
Fair enough.I agree with much that you wrote here. And having spent 33 years in education - I can tell you conclusively that we badly need to regear much of what we do particularly for the non-college bound student.
News from The Associated Press
Record 93,626,000 Americans Not in Labor Force; Participation Rate Declines to 62.6%
So is this good news, bad news, mediocre news or something else?
Exactly!
Most of those middle-class manufacturing jobs are never coming back - they provided the back-bone of the post war economic boom that continued (of sorts) through the decades.
Only now unfortunately, a growing segment of our economy is 'finance', rather than manufacturing - and where finance had traditionally 'greased the wheels of capitalism' by acting as a catalyst for economic production 'adding' to the economic system, it now is often a parasitic profit center of it's own, 'removing' capital from the economic system. Paper profits redistribute capital, but do nothing to increase production!
This was the Bain Capital/Mitt Romney business model popularized in the '80's: Break companies up, sell pieces off, ship jobs out, and scoop-up the (paper) profits while adding nothing in physicality, capital, or production. In other words, nothing real that can be 'touched' is added, but financial capital is removed.
To see a quite different use of the financial markets, look to China, where factories & physical plants (along with an astronomically growing consumer economy) are sprouting-up overnight, turning villages into towns and towns into cities, empowering & transforming citizens who previously had little, into market-driven consumers renting apartments in new high-rises, buying condos & new cars, and driving their consumer market resultant of the dollars their manufacturing concerns are raking in from the American consumer.
There's plenty of new things you can 'touch', there!
Dude, get a clue. Boomers didn't officially turn 65 until 2011. So all these retirements LONG BEFORE OBAMA weren't boomers. And so plenty of boomers are still working. And with the retirement age increasing that's also affected.
The aging of our population is just magnified by the the boomers. As people live longer, the percentage of our population beyond their working years grows.
This graph should give you a good indication how the US demographics have changed
Calculated Risk: U.S. Population Distribution by Age, 1950 through 2050
even before the boomers retired
when you look at the age 25 to 55 demographic...which is a large chunk of your working aged population, labor force participation dropped 0.2% between 2002 and 2012.
Honestly, this stuff is all on the internet and it's been talked about sooo many times.
Yeah it's been overdiscussed. Many graphs have been shown, but yet few feel better about the economy. There's a reason for that. It's smoke, and people smell the stink. Believe what you like.
Another Gain in Consumer Confidence - dshort - Advisor PerspectivesConsumer confidence improved further in June, following a modest gain in May,” said Lynn Franco, Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board. “Over the past two months, consumers have grown more confident about the current state of business and employment conditions. In addition, they are now more optimistic about the near-term future, although sentiment regarding income prospects is little changed. Overall, consumers are in considerably better spirits and their renewed optimism could lead to a greater willingness to spend in the near-term.”
I am loathe to put much stock into Labor Force Participation because it addresses everyone not in the workforce equally without looking into their reasons.
Good news...labor force participation has been dropping for a long time, before Obama took office. It's the aging of our population. The financial hit and sluggish economy has accelerated the trend but the labor force participation the country had when boomers where of working age and before people started living longer and going to school longer isn't going to be the norm anymore.
Overall, we're adding jobs which is a positive.
As for wages, job growth has to happen before wages start going up. That's to be expected
Mediocre news.
It's good that the unemployment rate is decreasing, but there is never going to be a time when unemployment hits a certain number, and we can say "okay, that's good enough." The fact that some people are unable to find work is completely unacceptable, and serious action needs to be taken to address the problem. The idea that we should encourage businesses to hire people by cutting their taxes is incredibly naïve. There is no guarantee to ensure that the money acquired from a reduced tax rate will go towards new jobs. Employers actually need to held accountable to reducing the issue of unemployment: the workweek needs to be reduced to 35 hours with full compensation so that employers must hire more employees. The government also needs to establish public works programs that anyone off the street can work for in order to address the problem head on. The ideal unemployment rate is 0% and every able-bodied adult should have a right to a job.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?