From Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius:Hatzius is upbeat.
• Since the start of the Great Recession in late 2007, the labor force participation rate has fallen by more than three percentage points, including a sharp drop in April back to the late-2013 lows. The extent of the decline has surprised many economists, ourselves included. What accounts for it, and will it continue?
Calculated RiskGoldman Sachs on the Labor Force Participation Rate
Bill McBride
3 comments:
I think he is whistling past the graveyard, as I read the article.
He's "upbeat" that at some point "discouraged workers" will go back to being "unemployed"...
??????
Hatzius makes a point about demographics and retirement sending the workforce participation rate lower, but I prefer to think of it as forced retirement. Believe me when I say that age discrimination in the workplace is the 800/lb gorilla that nobody wants to talk about. The sharp increase in social security disability ties into the same forced retirement, age discrimination theme as well.
This topic hits close to home for me for the past 2.5 years. Wide scale corporate downsizing at Thomson Reuters in the fall of 2011 pushed me out of a job I loved at the ripe old age of 59. I am only now going back to work with a partner in a money management start-up. Moral of the story is that things are looking up... at least for me. I figure that if I'm going back to work, the recession must really be over.
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