The Weekly Standard – by Daniel Harper
A new chart from the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee shows a startling fact: Almost 1 in 4 Americans between the ages of 25-54 (or prime working years) are not working.
Here’s a chart showing those in that age group currently employed (95.6 million) and those who aren’t (28.9 million):
“There are 124.5 million Americans in their prime working years (ages 25–54). Nearly one-quarter of this group—28.9 million people, or 23.2 percent of the total—is not currently employed. They either became so discouraged that they left the labor force entirely, or they are in the labor force but unemployed. This group of non-employed individuals is more than 3.5 million larger than before the recession began in 2007,” writes the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee.
“Those attempting to minimize the startling figures about America’s vanishing workforce—workplace participation overall is near a four-decade low—will say an aging population is to blame. But in fact, while the workforce overall has shrunk nearly 10 million since 2009, the cohort of workers in the labor force ages 55 to 64 has actually increased over that same period, with many delaying retirement due to poor economic conditions.
“In fact, over two-thirds of all labor force dropouts since that time have been under the age of 55. These statistics illustrate that the problems in the American economy are deep, profound, and pervasive, afflicting the sector of the labor force that should be among the most productive.”
I always want to know more. For instance, how do these figures correlate to households receiving various government welfare/unemployment benefits? Is there a direct correlation?
Where does the following fit in: families where one parent is home raising children or has a home business, while the other parent works in the “labor force.” Is there an increasing trend of homeschooling? People who do not work, but live off investments, or family money (yes, those exist) or who have become self sufficient in some way so that they do not need to be “employed.” People who are students.
Interested as always in trends over time, but how these different factors correlate (or not), to get a more complete picture.