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Re: First Presidential Debate
Old 10-07-2012, 10:19 AM   #15
Professor S
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Default Re: First Presidential Debate

Quote:
Originally Posted by TheGame View Post
What do those percentages stand for? I clicked on your link and it said database unavailable. I'm ASSUMING it stands for percentage of Americans who are actively looking for work over time (and I'm not sure if the pool is the total poulation of the US, or they limit it by age, or exclude people going to school etc etc).
It's the percentage of Americans currently participating in the labor force. Something else to keep in mind is that while unemployment dropped to 7.8%, we only added 114,000 jobs. We need to add about 200,000 just to keep up with the population. To me, though, the most disturbing trend is the increased percentage of young people who are dropping out of the labor force, and that more people are continuing to work well above retirement age.

http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_303.htm

Quote:
I'd like to see a graph of that going back to the 90's. It's hard to put a 2% drop in perspective without knowing what was happening before he got elected.
I'll do better than that:



This goes back to 1980, the last time our participation rate was this low. It started to significantly drop during the 2008 crash and has continued to drop since then. But as you see, the downward trend started after the internet bust.
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Last edited by Professor S : 10-07-2012 at 10:29 AM.
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