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If you look at a chart of the labor force participation rate, it did drop to a low, and has only partially recovered to a rate last seen in the mid-late 1970s.
by digikata 5y ago
If you look at a chart of the labor force participation rate, it did drop to a low, and has only partially recovered to a rate last seen in the mid-late 1970s. That is significant. Certainly very different from the rate just previous in 2019. Though to really understand it, I think you might have to pick apart the data among different age ranges.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART/ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART/
- rsj_hn 5y agoRight, but that instant drop was lockdowns. Basically the whole nation went into lockdown, then partially re-opened. Now you have a partial lockdown situation. E.g. restaurants limited to X people, etc. If she had written a piece that said "the labor force may not recover from the lockdowns", then she could gather this piece of data and other pieces of data and make a case. But that's not the Great Resignation thesis. FYI, I am not saying that we should not have good labor reporting -- now is one of the rare times when labor reporting is actually interesting. But not this Time piece. I could spend 10 minutes googling and come up with a more interesting, more fact base piece of journalism.
- digikata 5y agoOne could interpret the phrase of great resignation a little more loosely, not as one of people leaving their jobs, but not returning as fast as what is obviously expected. But I agree that the data backed research is lacking in this article. With a little more time they could have done an age breakdown of the participation rate and have a much more interesting article with stronger conclusions.
- addicted 5y agoI don’t think there’s any place in the US that has any sort of lockdown. I think that’s been the case for many months now.