Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Civilian Employment-Population Ratio - Anyone Have a Plot Back to 1900?

commentary by Roger Erickson

The Civilian Employment-Population Ratio, is a more useful way to look at our Output Gap - since it is one indication of the fraction of our population actually utilized. In addition to net employment data, the St. Louis Fed office has many informative plots of employment data for men, women and other subcategories, going back to 1948. The net employment picture is not a pretty one.

Graph of Civilian Employment-Population Ratio


Yet it would be even more useful to have a similar plot going all the way back to, say, 1900. Anyone have one?

ps: The only way this plot wouldn't be frightening is if ALL of those US citizens not employed by co-citizens had suddenly become owners of companies maintaining overseas employees. Unfortunately, that isn't the case.

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