Whose Labor Force Participation is It, Anyways?
Diane asked me to comment on Tommy De Seno's post regarding the decline in labor force participation. The statistic comes from the household survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Every decade they have to update their data from the Census. That confirmed a pattern we've observed for some time: All of that gain that Tommy shows is from female labor force participation. The participation of men has been declining for decades. Timothy Taylor has a very nice article on this from last week, and the relevant graph is below:
Tim's article has great detail and highlights a number of trends for why males are dropping out (disability filings?) and the changing behavior of youth (more in college?) and elderly employment (better health?) Rather than rehash the arguments, I invite you to read more. But this quote from a paper Tim reviews, seems to answer Tommy's question:
This article presents a variety of evidence—including data on demographic shifts, labor market flows, gender differences, and the effects of long-term unemployment—to disentangle the roles of the business cycle and trend factors in the recent drop in participation. Taken together, the evidence indicates that long-term trend factors account for about half of the decline in labor force participation from 2007 to 2011, with cyclical factors accounting for the other half.
- Comment (4)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (1)
Comments:
Re: Whose Labor Force Participation is It, Anyways?
Thanks King! I askd Diane to reach out to you since my union negotiated contract with Peter and Rob does not require me to answer such difficult questions about the economy from the Ricochet membership (in other words, I was clueless).
Re: Whose Labor Force Participation is It, Anyways?
King there seems to be, using the graph you posted, and significant drop in the lobor force for women in the Obama years. It appears to be a bigger drop than under all previous Presidents since 1948.
Is that right?
Apr '11
Re: Whose Labor Force Participation is It, Anyways?
Wait. Is the falling participation of men in the labor force caused by women entering it. In other words, are women taking the jobs away from men and so they are leaving the work force? Or, are men leaving the work force and women stepping in to fill the gap?
Aug '10
Re: Whose Labor Force Participation is It, Anyways?
I can't pull up the data today, but the trend seems to be that big job losses in the last 4 years occurred in industries that were heavily dominated by men. Construction, home building, manufacturing, etc.
I don't want to say the growing sectors--health care, education, government workers--are skewed towards women workers, because I don't have the data in hand. But I think they might be.