Question

Use FRED from the St. Louis Federal Reserve to find the labor force participation graph for the United States since 1950 for the entire labor force, men only, and women only. Describe the trends you see in the graph and suggest two to three reasons that may explain this shift.

Answer 1

Use FRED from the St. Louis Federal Reserve to find the labor force participation graph for the United States since 1950 for the entire labor force, men only, and women only. Describe the trends you see in the graph and suggest two to three reasons that may explain this shift.

Answer-

From the FRED graphs, the following observations can be made.

The first chart shows the overall civilian labor force participation rate, which grew from the mid-1960s right up until the start of the century. But this chart doesn’t paint the whole picture. It looks like things were just fine up until 2000. Not really. The next two charts show what really happened.

The second chart is the male labor force participation rate. The drop-off has been significant.

But the Female Labor Force Participation Rate Has Doubled

Note that the participation rate for women doubled in the 50 years up till 2000. Meanwhile, for men it went from almost 90% (87.4% to be precise) to just below 70% today. And that falloff has been steady throughout the entire period.

If the trend since 1970 does continue, nearly one-fourth of all men aged 25–54 will be voluntarily jobless by mid-century.

US has millions of unoccupied working-age males right now. What are they doing all day? Survey data suggests they spend much of their time staring at screens—either TV or video games.

One may suspect this group works more than the surveys indicate. Much of the work happens off the books as they try to preserve government benefits or avoid child support payments.

Nevertheless, they surely don’t have stable careers. Why not? What holds them back?

• Education: Many of the aimless males barely made it through high school and aren’t ready for college.
• Safety Nets: Our well-intentioned social programs can create a disincentive for people to work.
• Addictions: A startlingly high number of men without work take prescription pain medicines. Others use alcohol or other drugs.
• Crime: It’s about an increase in crime, because overall US crime is actually in a real downtrend and has been for some time. The actual, often overlooked, problem is the large number of people with criminal records.

Men Without Work—That’s Bad for Everyone

As you can see, “men without work” is a tough problem. It’s as much sociological as economic, but it has a serious economic impact.

Technological solutions may not come to our rescue this time. If anything, technology is aggravating the problem by making it cost-effective for machines to do entry-level work that once needed humans.

Men without work eventually become men without hope, and that’s bad for everyone.