3 ms·

What is strange is this has been going on since the 1950s and it is even invariant in relation to economic cycles. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS113000

What is strange is this has been going on since the 1950s and it is even invariant in relation to economic cycles. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001 I am also an exception to this rule (I am employed but I live at home). Currently I'm saving for a down payment to a Condo / House.

chromaton 5y ago
The population is getting older. https://www.statista.com/statistics/241494/median-age-of-the-us-population/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241494/median-age-of-the...
blakesterz 5y ago
That's quite an interesting graph. I wonder if it is also influenced by things to do with average age or age of retirement, time spent in school, or something like that. Just looking at it makes me wonder about demographics/education/etc. That's about a 20% drop over the years, I would assume caused by a number of factors.
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  My speculation is that it’s like the argument that minimum wages increase the skill floor for employment. However, it’s that a combination of automation and cost optimization eliminated all the marginal jobs, rather than the wage floor. Automation allows a salary employee to pick up what previously would have been a full-time minimum wage position under “other duties as assigned” without overworking them. Cost optimization meant that companies realized that they do not need their floors to be that sparkling clean, further reducing the number of low-wage/low-skill positions.
  - erhk 5y ago
    Tax the machines
tootie 5y ago
I'd suspect this has a lot of to with women being in the workforce meaning men are less required to work relentlessly. More recently, it's the aging population. The chart for just prime age males is less dramatic: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25MAUSM156S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25MAUSM156S Also, a topic that has been surprisingly quiet is that employment-population rate absolutely cratered to a near 50-year low during the pandemic. We had a positive report in the UNRATE last week, but participation is still digging out of an historic hole.
- watwut 5y ago
  > I'd suspect this has a lot of to with women being in the workforce meaning men are less required to work relentlessly. Afaik, career men working hours went up after women went to work. The culture of overwork went up.
_Microft 5y ago
Maybe is has to do with women entering the labor force? Here I plotted the labor force participation rate of women and men plus the sum of both. While the rate for men declines, the one for women increases. Update: here is a new graph without the assumption that there are equally many men and women (participation rates for each are now multiplied by the population size of each and normalized to total population). The interesting part is that the total labor participation rate is moving very little, just between ~59-67%. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EFG8 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EFG8 // OLD: The sum of both moves between 120 and 135% (assumption here is that there are roughly as many men as there are women which should be approximately correct): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EFEs https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EFEs
- notriddle 5y ago
  I think that's horribly misleading. Obviously, the percentage of women in the workforce shot up after anti-discrimination laws were applied to sex, but since the turn of the century, that trend has leveled off and reversed. If you just look at the last 20 years, the percentage of men and women in the work force have both been going down. Using your own, new chart (EFG8), which I used DoL statistics to verify [1], the overall labor force participation rate dropped from 67 in 2000 to 63 right before the pandemic hit, almost monotonically. What happened 20 years ago? [1]: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/facts-over-time/women-in-the-labor-force https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/facts-over-time/women-i... (specifically, "Labor force participation rate by sex, race and Hispanic ethnicity")
Lammy 5y ago
The people guiding our economy won't risk the "wrong sorts" of people getting too many rights, having an income, and thinking they deserve to be able to own a home, start a family, and build any generational wealth. Now all the rest of us are feeling the fallout from it too. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300006 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300006

chromaton 5y ago

The population is getting older. https://www.statista.com/statistics/241494/median-age-of-the-us-population/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241494/median-age-of-the...

blakesterz 5y ago

That's quite an interesting graph. I wonder if it is also influenced by things to do with average age or age of retirement, time spent in school, or something like that. Just looking at it makes me wonder about demographics/education/etc. That's about a 20% drop over the years, I would assume caused by a number of factors.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago
My speculation is that it’s like the argument that minimum wages increase the skill floor for employment. However, it’s that a combination of automation and cost optimization eliminated all the marginal jobs, rather than the wage floor. Automation allows a salary employee to pick up what previously would have been a full-time minimum wage position under “other duties as assigned” without overworking them. Cost optimization meant that companies realized that they do not need their floors to be that sparkling clean, further reducing the number of low-wage/low-skill positions.
- erhk 5y ago
  Tax the machines

tootie 5y ago

I'd suspect this has a lot of to with women being in the workforce meaning men are less required to work relentlessly. More recently, it's the aging population. The chart for just prime age males is less dramatic: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25MAUSM156S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25MAUSM156S Also, a topic that has been surprisingly quiet is that employment-population rate absolutely cratered to a near 50-year low during the pandemic. We had a positive report in the UNRATE last week, but participation is still digging out of an historic hole.

watwut 5y ago
> I'd suspect this has a lot of to with women being in the workforce meaning men are less required to work relentlessly. Afaik, career men working hours went up after women went to work. The culture of overwork went up.

_Microft 5y ago

Maybe is has to do with women entering the labor force? Here I plotted the labor force participation rate of women and men plus the sum of both. While the rate for men declines, the one for women increases. Update: here is a new graph without the assumption that there are equally many men and women (participation rates for each are now multiplied by the population size of each and normalized to total population). The interesting part is that the total labor participation rate is moving very little, just between ~59-67%. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EFG8 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EFG8 // OLD: The sum of both moves between 120 and 135% (assumption here is that there are roughly as many men as there are women which should be approximately correct): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EFEs https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EFEs

notriddle 5y ago
I think that's horribly misleading. Obviously, the percentage of women in the workforce shot up after anti-discrimination laws were applied to sex, but since the turn of the century, that trend has leveled off and reversed. If you just look at the last 20 years, the percentage of men and women in the work force have both been going down. Using your own, new chart (EFG8), which I used DoL statistics to verify [1], the overall labor force participation rate dropped from 67 in 2000 to 63 right before the pandemic hit, almost monotonically. What happened 20 years ago? [1]: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/facts-over-time/women-in-the-labor-force https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/facts-over-time/women-i... (specifically, "Labor force participation rate by sex, race and Hispanic ethnicity")

Lammy 5y ago

The people guiding our economy won't risk the "wrong sorts" of people getting too many rights, having an income, and thinking they deserve to be able to own a home, start a family, and build any generational wealth. Now all the rest of us are feeling the fallout from it too. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300006 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300006