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Comment by voisin | Hacker News Reader

I concur. Where are all the employees? Labour force participation has collapsed over a number of years, but where are all the people if not getting some unemployment somewhere? It seems every retailer I pass in every city has a sign up right now looking for employees.

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Some stayed at home to take care of the kids. Others upleveled and went for jobs that pay better wages. A bunch of people died as well, I wonder of this affected the job market. I'd love to read a study on this specific topic.

https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...

Labor force participation has not collapsed, the population pyramid is simply aging.

The trend was clear since 10 years ago, but pandemic accelerated it for some people, but still not a collapse.

I don’t think the link you’ve provided confirms that it is simply due to the population aging, though I don’t disagree that may be a component of it. The link just doesn’t help explain what relative contribution comes from aging vs participation. If you click male or female over 20, participation rate, the numbers drop over the last decade quite a bit. What are these people doing if not working?

Yes, the BLS graph was meant to show it has not collapsed. Nov 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 participation rates were 62.7%, 62.7%, 62.9%, 63.2%, and Nov 2021 is 61.8%.

Also, over 20 also includes people over retirement age, so they have stopped working.

See graph labeled "age ratio". If you hover your mouse over it, you will see working age portion of population starts to decrease after 2010, and had flatlined prior to that.

https://population-pyramid.net/en/pp/united-states-of-americ...

Here is more information, but large portions of the population aging out of working years is one of the reasons mentioned:

https://www.thebalance.com/labor-force-participation-rate-fo...

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