> Specifically the "Not in labor force" column. That's a 4M loss. Out of those it is disproportionately women and older people.
Ok, here is the same data from fred (sourced from BLS). Both the labor force and "not in labor force" increased by ~3M from pandemic to now. Given overall population growth of 8M, it looks like normal numeric growth of any statistical cluster within a growing population.
Date. Labor Nonlabor Pop
Feb 2020 164M 95M 259M
Apr 2020 156M 104M 259M
Aug 2022 164M 99M 264M
Jul 2023 167M 98M 267M
Net. 3M 3M 8M
> Out of those it is disproportionately women and older people.
Is the loss disproportionately among women? In terms of people not in the labor force, I don't see strong evidence for that. Stats for both women and men not in the labor force have returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Is job loss disproportionately among older people? Given that numbers of people in the labor force are now above pre-pandemic levels, we would have to posit a counterfactual world without a pandemic. I'm not going to do a whole regression with it's own assumptions of biz cycle etc. Eyeballing the chart, the current level could be in the range of alternative futures starting from April 2020. Its hard to say though with the boomers retiring out how many retired early or decided to not retire late.
Ok, here is the same data from fred (sourced from BLS). Both the labor force and "not in labor force" increased by ~3M from pandemic to now. Given overall population growth of 8M, it looks like normal numeric growth of any statistical cluster within a growing population.
Labor: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CLF16OVNonlabor: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU05000000
Population: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CNP16OV
> Out of those it is disproportionately women and older people.
Is the loss disproportionately among women? In terms of people not in the labor force, I don't see strong evidence for that. Stats for both women and men not in the labor force have returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Is job loss disproportionately among older people? Given that numbers of people in the labor force are now above pre-pandemic levels, we would have to posit a counterfactual world without a pandemic. I'm not going to do a whole regression with it's own assumptions of biz cycle etc. Eyeballing the chart, the current level could be in the range of alternative futures starting from April 2020. Its hard to say though with the boomers retiring out how many retired early or decided to not retire late.
All, Men, Women Not in Labor Force: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=LNU05000000,LNU0500000...,