Friday, April 5, 2013

Speaking of Leadership: We need more green arrow!

Spoken as the frustrated Econ major I am, we need more green arrow...current labor force and labor participation rate indices continue to trend the wrong way (red arrows). There are now 90 Million people who can work that are not working, or trying to work.   See charts below.

Source: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-05/people-not-labor-force-soar-663000-90-million-labor-force-participation-rate-1979-le
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4 comments:

  1. UnknownApril 5, 2013 at 5:43 PM

    Better man the halyards! Labor workforce participation rates may be declining, but hours worked (weekly) are increasing. The two are linked because in a tough economy productivity is valued more than staffing.

    http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost

    Also, could this be a problem that time itself will solve? As the baby boom generation ages out of the workforce, the succeeding cohorts are smaller, thus creating a smaller workforce which will naturally increase the labor participation rate.

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  2. Rope BurnsApril 6, 2013 at 11:07 AM

    Increasing productivity on a shrinking workforce will be short-lived by the laws of...nature, physics, economics, etc. Your second paragraph may be true, but there are 90M who could work that aren't working, and this number is increasing. That is a problem that demographics may never overcome.

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  3. UnknownApril 6, 2013 at 2:25 PM

    Good point. There is some great research on workforce participation rates from the BLS that points out that some of it is the economy, some of it is the availability of work geographically convenient, but a lot of participation is personal choice. The state by state variance in the participation rate is fascinating to look at.


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  4. Rope BurnsApril 7, 2013 at 10:28 PM

    Do you have a link within the BLS? I'd love to peruse...thanks!

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