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U.S. Adds 217,000 Jobs in May, Unemployment Rate Stays at 6.3%[W:218]

92,000,000 people aren't working. And you are the stats god?

LOL, only in your warped little delusional world.
It's 101,000,000 age 16+ not in prison or an institution thy aren't working. Your 92 million are those not trying to work. Over half are old, disabled, both, students, stay home soused etc.
 
92,000,000 people aren't working. And you are the stats god?

LOL, only in your warped little delusional world.

Do you REALLY expect every single high schooler and college student to have a job? Do you REALLY expect my 99 year old grandmother to have a job?

Really?
 
Do you REALLY expect every single high schooler and college student to have a job? Do you REALLY expect my 99 year old grandmother to have a job?

Really?
Maybe he doesn't consider them "people"
 
Do you just not like facts that disagree with you or something? The working-age population has increased considerably, while employment levels are at the same level they were before the increase. Obviously, that translates to a lower labor-force participation rate among people below retirement age and thus points to the labor force participation figure not being affected merely by retirement of baby-boomers. What you are saying is completely at odds with what every single expert has said about the labor-force participation rate. It is a reflection of the economy that labor-force participation rates have declined so much, not demographics.

No.

the CLFPR includes people over 65, and every high school and college age person. That's one of the issues with that metric.

Due to the fact that the baby boomers have been retiring in mass, we now have a larger percent of retired people than ever, which makes the CLFPR look much worse than it actually is. We should probably narrow the age range to something like age 25-65.
 
Do you REALLY expect every single high schooler and college student to have a job? Do you REALLY expect my 99 year old grandmother to have a job?

Really?

That's only 18-65 year old people.
 
That's only 18-65 year old people.

Where do you find the figures broken down like that?

Regardless, I'm glad that to know that there is a metric that is narrowed to a more reasonable working age as the traditional civilian work force population metric includes everyone 16 years or older with no top end age.

The percent of potential workers actually working has been dropping since Bill Clinton was president (2000), so this isn't exactly an Obama issue. As we continue to replace the need for human labor with technology, the percentage of us who need to have a job will continue to decline. Thats a good thing, as long as we can figure out a way to ensure that ever family has an income source.

There will be a day when the need for human labor is so insignificant, we will probably have to limit the number of jobs per household to just one, and limit the number of hours worked, so that there are enough jobs for every family to have an earned income (as opposed to the vast majority of us being on welfare).

George Jetson's workday was 3 hours long, and his workweek was only one day a week. Technology produced pretty much everything that everyone wanted. Ultimately, I hope that is where we are headed.
 
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That's only 18-65 year old people.
You see, when you don't care if what you say is truth or not, that's the same as lying. You have no idea what the age groups actually are...at best you're just assuming.

Where do you find the figures broken down like that? .
Well, you don't...BLS never uses 65 as an upper bound. But we can derive the 18-64 Not in the Labor Force. A-13. Employment status of the civilian noninstitutional population by age, sex, and race
Total age 16+ Not in the Labor Force: 91,782,000
Age 16-17 Not in the Labor Force: 7,006,000
Age 65+ Not in the Labor Force: 36,324,000
So: 91,782,000-7,006,000-36,324,000=48,452,000

And doing the same for Unemployed:
16+ = 9,443,000
16 - 17 = 443,000
65+ = 419,000
9,443,000-443,000-419,000 = 8,581,000

Which means total without work age 18-64 is 57,003,000
 
You see, when you don't care if what you say is truth or not, that's the same as lying. You have no idea what the age groups actually are...at best you're just assuming.


Well, you don't...BLS never uses 65 as an upper bound. But we can derive the 18-64 Not in the Labor Force. A-13. Employment status of the civilian noninstitutional population by age, sex, and race
Total age 16+ Not in the Labor Force: 91,782,000
Age 16-17 Not in the Labor Force: 7,006,000
Age 65+ Not in the Labor Force: 36,324,000
So: 91,782,000-7,006,000-36,324,000=48,452,000

And doing the same for Unemployed:
16+ = 9,443,000
16 - 17 = 443,000
65+ = 419,000
9,443,000-443,000-419,000 = 8,581,000

Which means total without work age 18-64 is 57,003,000

Thanks for that, obviously you put in some effort to figure that out. And thanks for pointing out that there is no upper age limit, I was 100% sure that there was no upper age limit, but I started to wonder if the poster who claimed that there was had found some sort of alternative CLFPR metric.

The declining CLFPR has no real significance in economics, or in determining the condition of our standard of living. Even though it has been falling for 14 years, it is still higher than it was for the first 202 years that this country existed. Our aggregate standard of living is determined by our GDP plus however much value that stay at home spouses add to our lives, much more than the CLFPR. As long as we keep producing more value per work hour (mostly due to technology), we can afford to have fewer and fewer people working in jobs outside the home - without suffering a decline in standard of living.

One of the things that we "demand" is leisure time and time for self improvement (education, raising our children, taking time to off from work to care for elderly or ill family members, etc). It occurs to me that these are the types of things, and values, that conservatives USED to stand for. These days, they act as they are bad things. That's part of the reason that I have moved away from the republican party - republicans no longer stand for anything other than for further enriching the already rich.

Our declining CLFPR is pretty much a bullcrap way that some Obama haters use to degrade Obama. It's interesting that they never b other to mention the fact that the CLFPR also fell under Bush.

Seriously, it's pretty pathetic that haters are having to stretch so far and having to depend on their assumption that others are ignorant to support their anti-Obama case, especially when there are plenty of legitimate things that they could be bashing Obama about.
 
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No.

the CLFPR includes people over 65, and every high school and college age person. That's one of the issues with that metric.

Due to the fact that the baby boomers have been retiring in mass, we now have a larger percent of retired people than ever, which makes the CLFPR look much worse than it actually is. We should probably narrow the age range to something like age 25-65.

Please try and look over the conversation before commenting. The working-age population has gone up a lot, yet the employment level is the same. Many people work in high school, never mind college where it is even more common. Not only do you have to consider those who are reaching working age, but those moving into the average age of higher employment. All stats point to one unavoidable conclusion: a large percentage of workers have left the work force for economic reasons. How much of it is a product of that is up for dispute, but no one would argue that the economy is not a heavy contributor. Higher levels of retirement would have continued a much slower gradual decline, but the economy caused a more precipitous decline. This is recognized as fact among every expert economist and serious commentator. It is also a significant part of what is causing the decline in the unemployment rate as many who were unemployed have ceased looking for work due to a lack of available jobs and are thus no longer considered in the unemployment stats. The low-level growth of jobs does provide some benefit to the economy as any increase in wage-earners has a positive impact, but the U.S. is not even close to being at its pre-crisis point of economic well-being.
 
Please try and look over the conversation before commenting. The working-age population has gone up a lot, yet the employment level is the same. Many people work in high school, never mind college where it is even more common. Not only do you have to consider those who are reaching working age, but those moving into the average age of higher employment. All stats point to one unavoidable conclusion: a large percentage of workers have left the work force for economic reasons. How much of it is a product of that is up for dispute, but no one would argue that the economy is not a heavy contributor. Higher levels of retirement would have continued a much slower gradual decline, but the economy caused a more precipitous decline. This is recognized as fact among every expert economist and serious commentator. It is also a significant part of what is causing the decline in the unemployment rate as many who were unemployed have ceased looking for work due to a lack of available jobs and are thus no longer considered in the unemployment stats. The low-level growth of jobs does provide some benefit to the economy as any increase in wage-earners has a positive impact, but the U.S. is not even close to being at its pre-crisis point of economic well-being.

are young people entering the work force faster than the boomers are now retiring from it?
i have looked for the data and was unable to find it
 
Please try and look over the conversation before commenting. The working-age population has gone up a lot, yet the employment level is the same. Many people work in high school, never mind college where it is even more common. Not only do you have to consider those who are reaching working age, but those moving into the average age of higher employment. All stats point to one unavoidable conclusion: a large percentage of workers have left the work force for economic reasons. How much of it is a product of that is up for dispute, but no one would argue that the economy is not a heavy contributor. Higher levels of retirement would have continued a much slower gradual decline, but the economy caused a more precipitous decline. This is recognized as fact among every expert economist and serious commentator. It is also a significant part of what is causing the decline in the unemployment rate as many who were unemployed have ceased looking for work due to a lack of available jobs and are thus no longer considered in the unemployment stats. The low-level growth of jobs does provide some benefit to the economy as any increase in wage-earners has a positive impact, but the U.S. is not even close to being at its pre-crisis point of economic well-being.

Yes, we have a smaller percent of our population working outside of the home than we have at any time since 1978. that percentage has been dropping since the year 2000, 9 years BEFORE Obama b.ecame president. You can't pin our declining CLFPR on Obama, nor is it necessarally a bad thing, except for the people who are unemployed but who are actively seeking work.

And yes, the high unemployment rate which was the result of the Great Bush Recession sped up the process. So what does that have to do with Obama? You do realize that the Great Bush Recession ended three months after Obama took office, and that job growth started six months after he took office don't you?

Those so-called "discouraged workers" have obviously found alternative means of support (often doing odd jobs like cutting yards or consulting or freelancing, or alternatively chosing to become homemakers), or else they would still be seeking employment - so I have little concern for them as they are doing whatever it is that they chose to do.

Also, we have a higher percentage of our young people enrolled in high school and college than ever before, and a higher percent of people who are age 65+ than ever before. That's not a bad thing, that just means that those people have a means of support other than working. For the retired folks, it's most likely their own savings plus ss, for the younger folks that's most likely family support.

This is a postive socio-economic issue, not an issue to bash Obama with.

By the way, I did not vote for Obama either time, and I did make the mistake of voting for Bush. I don't even support Obama, he's been a terrible president, but I don't like people distorting facts and blaming him for things that are not under his control.
 
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are young people entering the work force faster than the boomers are now retiring from it?
i have looked for the data and was unable to find it

I have no clue about that, but

I've seen some figures that suggest that young people are now tending to wait until they are older to enter the work force - mostly due to a record high percent of new high school graduates attending college, and a lack of available jobs for teenagers (which probably explains why they are now more likely to attend college).
 
are young people entering the work force faster than the boomers are now retiring from it?
i have looked for the data and was unable to find it

Compare the figures on page 3 of this 2007 report to the figures from May 2014. When you break the stats down you have roughly 5.9 million retirees in the past seven years out of the 13 million not in the labor force. Another 2.3 million of the 13 million are in the 16-24 range. Roughly the same amount of the 13 million are in the 55-64 range. In other words, 2.5 million more people 25 to 54 are not in the labor force and, overall, 7.1 million more people of working age are not in the labor force since 2007. Were those 7.1 million people in the labor force right now, the labor force participation rate would be about 65.8%. That would leave the labor force participation rate effectively unchanged from 66% in 2007. There are other points to consider, though, but no matter how you look at it the labor force participation rate among those of working-age is the primary driver of the decline.
 
Do you just not like facts that disagree with you or something?
Except they don't?
The working-age population has increased considerably
Exactly. That was my point all along. There are more people in the labor force than there was before the recession.

while employment levels are at the same level they were before the increase. Obviously, that translates to a lower labor-force participation rate among people below retirement age
Not everyone retires at the same age. I thought this was common sense. We're talking about Baby Boomers and they are retiring, whether your acknowledge it or not.

and thus points to the labor force participation figure not being affected merely by retirement of baby-boomers.
I never said JUST the Baby Boomers. Is it really so hard for people to understand an argument completely before making ridiculous posts about it?
92,000,000 people aren't working. And you are the stats god?

LOL, only in your warped little delusional world.
I guess when you were proven wrong over and over again, all you had left was to say something which had nothing to do with what we were talking about. That's an incredibly dishonest tactic you just tried to employ. I would be ashamed of myself if I felt the need to make useless and unrelated comments to avoid admitting I was wrong, like you just did.

Just admit you don't understand how jobs reports work and admit you were wrong about the number of people in the labor force. It'll be cleansing for you to simply admit you were wrong. While you're at it, you can admit you don't seem to understand red herrings either (as evidenced, once again, by this latest post).
 
Exactly. That was my point all along. There are more people in the labor force than there was before the recession.

Working-age population, not working population.

Not everyone retires at the same age. I thought this was common sense. We're talking about Baby Boomers and they are retiring, whether your acknowledge it or not.

By no means am I suggesting that Baby Boomers are not retiring, but the figures make it clear that they are not the ones contributing most to the decline. The biggest decline by number and by percentage is in the under 55 crowd. Are you saying those people are "retiring" in the millions?

I never said JUST the Baby Boomers.

You have done nothing but talk about retirement when addressing the labor force participation rate, and only suggest the possibility that there may be other causes as though there was some uncertainty over that fact.

Just admit you don't understand how jobs reports work and admit you were wrong about the number of people in the labor force.

Number of people in the labor force =/= labor force participation rate. It is a percentage of the population and it is much lower among much younger populations. Your focus on the number is like someone boasting that their wages haven't gone down when they haven't gone up either. In real terms, they are still losing money due to inflation. The narrative is presenting is as if somehow people got their jobs back, but that's garbage. More people are able to work than in 2007, but the number of people in the labor force in flat.
 
Working-age population, not working population.
*sigh*

It amazes me how you keep thinking you're making relevant points, while simultaneously continually missing my points. Take time to read what I said and then get back to me.
 
*sigh*

It amazes me how you keep thinking you're making relevant points, while simultaneously continually missing my points. Take time to read what I said and then get back to me.

I said the working-age population had increased and you responded that this was exactly what you were saying about the labor force growing. Working-age population is not the same thing as the labor force. Just like the military-age population is not the same thing as the number of people in the military. It is not about "missing your point" as your response was just plainly misreading what I said.

Just for the record, here is a relevant excerpt from one of your initial posts in this thread:

What you're likely referring to is the labor force participation rate. Big difference. And how is it explained? The Baby Boomers are retiring. That's how it is explained.

So, please explain to me then what your point was originally. You initially said flatly with no caveats that the labor force participation rate being lower was explained by Baby Boomers retiring. Are you just trying to shift the goalposts here?
 
...The biggest decline by number and by percentage is in the under 55 crowd. Are you saying those people are "retiring" in the millions?...

I figure if they are not working, and not looking for work, then they are retiring.

My mother-in-law chose to not work after age 50 (about 15 years ago), she essentially retired, I don't know what else you could call it.
 
ohhh ohhh ohhh this is all obamas fault that these jobs are being created lol maybe now someone might say it is not his fault for something happening.... sorry folks i could not help it!!!
 
I figure if they are not working, and not looking for work, then they are retiring.

My mother-in-law chose to not work after age 50 (about 15 years ago), she essentially retired, I don't know what else you could call it.

It declined among every under 55 age group, not just those close to 55. You can call it all retiring, but that's not very credible.
 
It declined among every under 55 age group, not just those close to 55. You can call it all retiring, but that's not very credible.

Well what would you call it then? Being a housewife or stay at home dad, or college student? Is any of that so horrible? We had an even lower percent of our people working outside the home prior to 1978 than we do today.

I don't think that labels are important. The CLFPR peaked in 1999 and has been dropping ever since. I'm sure there are lots of reasons for this happening, and I am sure that this trend will continue for decades, until there are virtually no more jobs (as the need for human labor continues to be replaced with technology).

I'm not even sure what we are arguing about, or are we even arguing?
 
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Well what would you call it then? Being a housewife or stay at home dad, or college student? Is any of that so horrible? We had an even lower percent of our people working outside the home prior to 1978 than we do today.

I don't think that labels are important. The CLFPR peaked in 1999 and has been dropping ever since. I'm sure there are lots of reasons for this happening, and I am sure that this trend will continue for decades, until there are virtually no more jobs (as the need for human labor continues to be replaced with technology).

I'm not even sure what we are arguing about, or are we even arguing?

We are arguing the insistence of some people that this cannot possibly be economic in origin. After all, if it were economic in origin, it would suggest the economy is not as stellar as many want to believe. Natch, aside from the usual people who just refuse to believe the economy is in bad shape, a lot of it is partisan in nature. If the "recovery" is mostly illusory then it means Obama has not saved America like the liberal Übermensch many wanted.
 
We are arguing the insistence of some people that this cannot possibly be economic in origin. After all, if it were economic in origin, it would suggest the economy is not as stellar as many want to believe. Natch, aside from the usual people who just refuse to believe the economy is in bad shape, a lot of it is partisan in nature. If the "recovery" is mostly illusory then it means Obama has not saved America like the liberal Übermensch many wanted.

The unemployment rate is 6.3%, which is higher than the normal 5% which is considered full employment. So obviously, there are people who are not working due to unemployment.

I don't know that anyone claims that our economy is stellar, not even Obama, except that maybe it is stellar compared to the way it was during the Great Bush Recession.

Everything is relative to whatever it is we are comparing it to.
 
The unemployment rate is 6.3%, which is higher than the normal 5% which is considered full employment. So obviously, there are people who are not working due to unemployment.

The labor force participation rate is at issue here. You are really stretching credulity if you are insisting that the significant decline in labor participation by people age 25-34 is anything but a consequence of the economy. No shortage of analysts have confirmed that the decline in labor force participation is primarily driven by the state of the economy. Having the same amount of people in the labor force as before the crisis is not a good thing when there are far more people needing financial support. The percentage of GDP represented by corporate profits is another one of those bad signs given that they are mostly hoarding cash rather than putting it to work in the system.

I don't know that anyone claims that our economy is stellar, not even Obama, except that maybe it is stellar compared to the way it was during the Great Bush Recession.

The "Great Bush Recession" is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about. It is a partisan take on economics that prevents people from viewing the numbers realistically.
 
The labor force participation rate is at issue here. You are really stretching credulity if you are insisting that the significant decline in labor participation by people age 25-34 is anything but a consequence of the economy. No shortage of analysts have confirmed that the decline in labor force participation is primarily driven by the state of the economy. Having the same amount of people in the labor force as before the crisis is not a good thing when there are far more people needing financial support. The percentage of GDP represented by corporate profits is another one of those bad signs given that they are mostly hoarding cash rather than putting it to work in the system.

The "Great Bush Recession" is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about. It is a partisan take on economics that prevents people from viewing the numbers realistically.

Our current labor force participation rate is higher than it was at any time prior to 1978. Were things terrible during the mid 20th century?

Our per work out productivity rate is higher today than it has ever been. As we produce more per work hour, then we either need shorter work hours, or fewer workers, or both.
It's only natural that as we become a richer society, we will have fewer workers working at any one point in time. We simply don't need as many workers.

Sorry, I just don't see what the issue is. The work force participation rate has been dropping since the year 2000, so it's not an Obama problem, or even a Bush issue, it dates back to Clinton. I don't think that it is a political or an economic issue it all, it's just a natural occurance based upon socio-technological-demograpic factors more than anything else.

And yes, the higher than normal unemployment rate does factor into it.

I often use the term "Great Bush Recession" just to take a little jab at those who like to blame the recession on Obama. I am actually not an Obama supporter, didn't vote for him either time, and wouldn't vote for him today, but it disgusts me when people blame ever little thing that happens in the world, including the recession that started 14 months before he took office, on him. I believe it has to do more with racism than anything else. Sorry, probably shouldn't have used that term with you.
 
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