Comment by radpanda | Hacker News Reader

Comment by radpanda | Hacker News Reader

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This feels like it matches my anecdata as well. Some folks in positions where they have the choice to work or not work are staying on the sidelines. I know a school administrator who retired earlier than planned rather than deal with the madness, I know a college kid who just took the summer off rather than get a summer job, I know a speech therapist turned stay-at-home mom, etc.

Rather than a few years ago when people's decision calculus was "do I want to trade my time for $X/hr to do some work?" it feels like it's become "do I want to trade my time for $X/hr AND risk getting myself or family members seriously sick AND deal with unhinged people at a time of political strife?" And sure, the X in $X/hr has gone up, but apparently not enough to convince as many people to wait tables as in 2019.

A number of friends made a bunch of money from stocks and crypto and decided to quit their jobs and build something of their own.

They always had plans to do it but never enough savings to take the leap.

You can look at the labor force participation rate: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-parti...

But I think controlling for demographic factors would take some work (look at the drop past 2000)

A more official source:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART

More interesting than the drop at 2020 is the continual decline since 2000.

Prime age participation is actually pretty high:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060

If the conversation is about price of labor, then the ratio of aggregate labor sellers to labor buyers is the relevant metric to compare over the years.

For example, more old people or otherwise disabled people wanting to buy labor relative to people willing and able to supply it, compared to previous decades.

Thanks, that's an interesting way to look at it.

Prime age work force participation is still high. A lot of the people that left the labor force were retirement age people that saw their retirement money go up by 50% or more and didn't really see a reason to come back.

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