Via Andrew Van Dam, a new paper tries to estimate why there are fewer people working than in the 90s. Much of this is due to the aging of the workforce, but even among prime working-age people the employment rate is down. Here’s the employment-population ratio for those aged 25-54 since the mid-90s: The peak of the dotcom boom is probably not the right comparison, but even if you use the mid-90s more generally as a baseline, about 2-3 percent of the working-age population has dropped out of the workforce over the past two decades. Why? Here’s what the […]
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