The first is simple, unemployment. It’s calculated in a way that is very favorable to the government[1], because the government decides how it’s calculated and generally wants to look like things are going well. Labor force participation, a statistic that more accurately captures the share of the productive population that is being squandered, has fallen precipitously from 2005 to around 2015, enjoyed a slight increase from 2015 to 2019, and then taken a nosedive afterwards, never recovering to its 2019 high. Since 2005, a full four percent of the population—one out of 25 people—have dropped out of the labor force. This is the sort of thing that affects everything, from the national psyche to the social fabric to, of course, our ability to use the country’s human resources efficiently.
The measure that you picked goes down if the population gets older and includes a larger share of retired people (which it has) or if more people age 16-24 are in school rather than working (which has also been happening).
That’s interesting—I don’t see employment-population ratio used very often in cases like this.
I would argue, however, that factoring out an increase in university attendance isn’t necessarily good practice for determining the degree of economic immiseration. During recessions, the general sentiment is that more people will pursue a higher degree than they would otherwise prefer in order to avoid a bad labor market. The share of the population getting into debt or burning generational capital (and, often, losing the prime years for starting a family) out of fear of a bad economy isn’t orthogonal to how bad things feel and are, especially for young people.
Prime age employment to population ratio is a better measure, and it does not show a decline since 2005.
The measure that you picked goes down if the population gets older and includes a larger share of retired people (which it has) or if more people age 16-24 are in school rather than working (which has also been happening).
That’s interesting—I don’t see employment-population ratio used very often in cases like this.
I would argue, however, that factoring out an increase in university attendance isn’t necessarily good practice for determining the degree of economic immiseration. During recessions, the general sentiment is that more people will pursue a higher degree than they would otherwise prefer in order to avoid a bad labor market. The share of the population getting into debt or burning generational capital (and, often, losing the prime years for starting a family) out of fear of a bad economy isn’t orthogonal to how bad things feel and are, especially for young people.