Nums: More re: labor force participation rates …

Since las t Friday’s jobs report and the flood of misdirection coming out of Washington, I’ve been trolling the BLS numbers.

Here are a couple that caught my eye …

Since 1950, the labor force participation rate (LFPR) among adult males has fallen from almost 90% to below 70% today.

Wow. Almost 1 of 5 men have opted out.

= = = = =

During the same period – 1950 to today – adult women’s LFPR has increased from about 33% to about 60%.

Best hypotheses I can conjure are that

(1) working women has freed some men to stay-at-me to either be Mr. Mom ,,, or just slack off

(2) more capable women have squeezed men out of jobs?

Any alternative explanations out there?

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This entry was posted on April 9, 2013 at 8:07 am and is filed under BLS, Employment - Jobs, Unemployment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tim Says:
April 10, 2013 at 9:18 am | Reply
In 1973, 24% of 18-24-year-olds were enrolled in college. By 2008, that had risen 39.8%. That age group’s LFPR has also fallen, from 57.9 to 50.4% during the same period. I suspect this has had an impact on the overall labor force numbers.

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