...The phrase “declining labor participation” doesn’t generate the same electricity as “Loch Ness monster” or “curse of Tutankhamen,” but scratching the surface of the past year’s employment statistics reveals a mystery every bit deserving of Nimoy’s dramatic flair. It’s true that 169,000 new jobs were created in August, and that America’s unemployment rate fell to 7.3 percent. Unfortunately the primary factor behind that declining rate was the steady reduction in the number of people seeking work. Adult participation in the workforce has fallen to its lowest level in 35 years — and nobody knows why.
When people without jobs stop looking for work, the government no longer counts them as unemployed. To understand the marked effect this can have on economic statistics, consider that if the participation rate had held steady over the past five years, the official unemployment rate would be 11.2 percent. Instead, the participation rate has fallen from 66.2 percent to 63.2. During the recovery periods of 1982-84 and 1992-94, just the opposite was true. A growing economy encouraged ever-higher numbers to join the workforce, with participation peaking in 2000 at 67.3 percent.
Since the size of the economy is dependent on the number of employed workers and their productivity, having fewer people in the labor force places long-term limits on economic growth. Having fewer workers taking home paychecks also places downward pressure on the consumption of everything from clothes to cars to houses. On the other side of the ledger, dropping participation places greater burdens on public coffers by raising the number of people eligible for government benefits.
In turn, the generosity of federal assistance programs has been offered as one possible explanation for the missing workers. On average, Americans are eligible for 53 weeks of unemployment insurance, nearly twice the prerecession level; in some states, that increases to over 70 weeks. In addition, approximately 9 million adults receive Social Security disability payments, a number that has grown by 50 percent in the past decade. In similar fashion, the number of people receiving nutrition assistance — commonly known as food stamps — has soared from less than 20 million to over 45 million in just 10 years...Read the full op-ed HERE.
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7 comments:
Perhaps welfare is one reason some people aren't in the workforce. But personal experience tells me that hundreds of applications are submitted for every job applied for. No, those missing in the workforce do not get jobs MOSTLY because our economy lacks jobs to get.
Prosperity and economic growth needs stability and certainty. We have neither. ObamaCare is one looming disaster CAUSING a block in job creation. Nobody knows what to expect.
People won't hire baby boomers because they don't want to pay for the medical insurance. It is a fact. Sexism or not employers are doing this vicious. It is highly enforced upon HR personnel.
*viciously and with high intention
A family member has a job where an employee and manager of 15 years with the company was fired, because they didn't want to pay his pension. This isn't a rare occurrence. It is highly commonplace. It happens every day, and people see it in Universities where a person works his whole life for the university only to be laid off just before he reaches retirement.
ObamaCare is slaughtering our economy, when it was already vulnerable. Military officers have warned and warned that the economy is the bigggest threat to our security and defense.
ObamaCare expresses perfectly Obama's hatred of America and Americans, AND the middle class.
Love the poster Obama is holding in this article. Obama represents the force to reverse one thousand years of enlightment, industrial advances, medical breakthroughs, and freedom. Obama's grasp of the history of people and nations is primitive. He was a rebellious student, so his mother sent him to Hawaii to live with grandparents because she couldn't discipline him. He wasn't willing to learn and study English with her, for one thing. Monarchy is primitive and ridiculous. Freedom is impossible without a free press. Obama horrific toward our press, shady intimidation and snooping with abuse of power and utter lack of respect for individual civil liberties.
Obama actions indicate he expects us to serve him. He certainly enforces that by silencing Benghazi witnesses and silencing and covering up the killings of Breitbart and Michael Hastings.
Obama doesn't get it that he's a public servant, he's very rebellious and arrogant. He thinks the military can be used as his personal mercenaries, and forgets they belong to the people and their allegiance and oath is to our Constitution, NOT to him.
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