Out of the labor force data

tommyjo

New Member
This for those like Gilligan, GRUPS and the rest of that crew who so conveniently pull 1 piece of data from a major economic report and use that piece of data to paint this country in a negative light.

Here is the chart, from the BLS, of the growth of the out of the labor force portion of our citizenry going back to 1970.

http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/LNU05000000_412320_1425731395286.gif

Gilligan, GRUPS and crew are using their standard cut and paste tactic from their political propaganda sites that completely ignore context, reason or rationality. Their job, both the source and the poster, is to distort. Yet, if these people would simply look at the data it is clear to see that the "our of the labor force" component has been growing steadily since the early 1990s. You can also see the clear seasonal pattern to the numbers as this is an unadjusted statistic. Out of labor force is always higher after the holidays.

Why is this number moving higher? Again, for anyone who can think beyond the political, the answers are fairly easy to understand. Despite Baykat's assertions in her individual case, education is becoming a more and more critical component to increasing one's probability for lifelong economic success/stability. In other words, more kids are going to school, they are staying longer and adults are going back to school to increase skills. Additionally, the baby boomers are retiring. The recession and the sluggish recovery that is the obvious and historical result of a financial crisis elevated the steepness of the curve. In other words, there are structural (school, retirement) and cyclical (recession) factors involved. One can also see the increase in the steepness of the curve that began in the late 90s and leveled out during the housing boom on the mid 00's.

The labor force counts those 16 and over (which defines the schooling and retirement impact). For basic definitions go here: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#nilf (It really helps if you have the basic understanding of things)

For those who may be more interested in a more even handed review of the recent employment report, see Dean Baker: http://www.cepr.net/index.php/data-bytes/jobs-bytes/job-growth-remains-strong-in-february

Gilligan has posted report from Mr. Baker in the past...but since this was an even handed discussion of a, mostly, very positive employment report, Gilligan instead chose to pull from GRUPS bag of negative propaganda sources.
 

itsbob

I bowl overhand
This for those like Gilligan, GRUPS and the rest of that crew who so conveniently pull 1 piece of data from a major economic report and use that piece of data to paint this country in a negative light.

Here is the chart, from the BLS, of the growth of the out of the labor force portion of our citizenry going back to 1970.

http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/LNU05000000_412320_1425731395286.gif

Gilligan, GRUPS and crew are using their standard cut and paste tactic from their political propaganda sites that completely ignore context, reason or rationality. Their job, both the source and the poster, is to distort. Yet, if these people would simply look at the data it is clear to see that the "our of the labor force" component has been growing steadily since the early 1990s. You can also see the clear seasonal pattern to the numbers as this is an unadjusted statistic. Out of labor force is always higher after the holidays.

Why is this number moving higher? Again, for anyone who can think beyond the political, the answers are fairly easy to understand. Despite Baykat's assertions in her individual case, education is becoming a more and more critical component to increasing one's probability for lifelong economic success/stability. In other words, more kids are going to school, they are staying longer and adults are going back to school to increase skills. Additionally, the baby boomers are retiring. The recession and the sluggish recovery that is the obvious and historical result of a financial crisis elevated the steepness of the curve. In other words, there are structural (school, retirement) and cyclical (recession) factors involved. One can also see the increase in the steepness of the curve that began in the late 90s and leveled out during the housing boom on the mid 00's.

The labor force counts those 16 and over (which defines the schooling and retirement impact). For basic definitions go here: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#nilf (It really helps if you have the basic understanding of things)

For those who may be more interested in a more even handed review of the recent employment report, see Dean Baker: http://www.cepr.net/index.php/data-bytes/jobs-bytes/job-growth-remains-strong-in-february

Gilligan has posted report from Mr. Baker in the past...but since this was an even handed discussion of a, mostly, very positive employment report, Gilligan instead chose to pull from GRUPS bag of negative propaganda sources.

So the reason we have a record number of adults in the out of work labor category is because they are all in school? Seriously? 98 MILLION adults that should be in the labor force are ALL in school? If these 98 Million people aren't working how are they paying for school?

Don't know about anyone else here with a degree but I worked multiple jobs while I went to school. Granted they were minimum wage or a little more, but I was still employed.


You're just a special kind of stupid aren't you?
 

SG_Player1974

New Member
With the ever growing and outrageous costs of "quality" higher education... How long do you think it will be before the country either needs education reform OR businesses will need to lower the bar because the list of potential "qualified" candidates gets down to nil?

Its not rocket science. Every year the price of higher education gets higher yet, wages remain stagnant.
 
So the reason we have a record number of adults in the out of work labor category is because they are all in school? Seriously? 98 MILLION adults that should be in the labor force are ALL in school? If these 98 Million people aren't working how are they paying for school?

Don't know about anyone else here with a degree but I worked multiple jobs while I went to school. Granted they were minimum wage or a little more, but I was still employed.


You're just a special kind of stupid aren't you?

No, the reason we have a record number of people not in the labor force (among the civilian noninstitutional population 16 and over) - a little less than 93 million now - is because we almost always have a record number of people not in the labor force. Almost every month since we've been keeping track that number has gone up, for what I would think are obvious reasons. Every now and then the number will tick down for a month or so, but then it will quickly resume its long-term upward trend. In fact, it just did so last month - it dropped 354k in January and then went back up 354k in February such that it's been exactly and unusually flat for a 2 months period. Part of that is probably due to imprecision in the method used to arrive at the numbers - it's based on a sample survey.

Anyway, our population continues to grow, so of course the number of people not in the labor force continues to grow and would usually do so even if we weren't in the middle of a long-term demographic trend that was seeing a larger portion of that population choose not to be in the labor force. We have a growing population AND we have an increasing portion of that population not in the labor force (in large part because we currently have a high rate of people retiring), so that adds up to an increasing number of people not in the labor force. But, again, the latter is almost always the case.

As for why those 90 million-ish people aren't in the labor force, there are lots of reasons. Some of them are in school; but no, that's not the only reason or even the main reason. A whole lot of them are retired. Some of them have spouses that work. Some of them just don't need to work for whatever reasons. Some of them are disabled. Some of them would like work but can't work right now for some reason - family responsibilities, illness, transportation issues, school. A fairly small portion of them would like work and can work but aren't currently actively looking for work because they don't think work is available or don't think they are qualified for whatever work is available - so-called discouraged workers.

For a huge portion of this group, they aren't people that should be in the labor force as you suggest. They are people that traditionally haven't been in the labor force (at least, many of them haven't traditionally been) - students (including some high school students), spouses in single income families, retirees.
 

Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member
This for those like Gilligan, GRUPS and the rest of that crew who so conveniently pull 1 piece of data from a major economic report and use that piece of data to paint this country in a negative light.

.

LMAO. Yr a peach. mmmwah.
 
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