There was a tax cut that took effect as-of January, 1971. Actually, the government sold it to the public as repeal of a 5% tax surcharge effective 30 June 1970

There was a tax cut that took effect as-of January, 1971. Actually, the government sold it to the public as repeal of a 5% tax surcharge effective 30 June 1970, but they did not change form 1040 to identify which income and/or deductions were in which half of the year, so it actually worked out to be a 2.5% reduction in tax rates as-of 1 January 1970, and a 2.5% reduction as of January 1971. With these 2 pay raises from the government a year apart, employers may have felt less pressure to raise wages. In addition, note that the first year of very high birth rates during the baby boom was 1952. The non-college bound high-school graduates would all be entering the labor force in 1970 and 1971. As the draft lottery numbers were drawn late in 1969, those who got the high numbers felt free to leave college and enter the work force without fear of the draft, most often at the end of the school year in June 1970, and thencefrom a large fraction of high school graduates could make their decisions about whether or not to attend college without any need for ways to avoid the draft.