One of the biz show pundits made an off-hand remark that he thought much of the recent decline in labor force participation rates was at least partially traceable to women dropping out of the workforce because of the high cost of childcare.
Plausible explanation that piqued my trust but verify interest, so I did a little digging.
Let’s start with the big picture : The total labor force participation rate (LFPR).
Some takeaways ….
Note that the history breaks into roughly 3 distinct eras.
From 1965 (as far back as I looked) until about 1990, the LFPR increased by about 8 percentage … almost a straight line, trending up.
Then, coincident to the 1990 recession, the LFPR essentially flat-lined with some bouncing around between 66% and 67%.
Since the 2008 financial crisis and the LFPR has dropped around 4 percentage points … not quite half of the 1965 to 1990 gain.
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Splitting the chart by gender is where things start to get interesting.
The Homa Files 