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2 posts on "labor force participation rate"
March 30, 2023

What Has Driven the Labor Force Participation Gap since February 2020?

Mary Amiti, Sebastian Heise, Giorgio Topa, and Julia Wu

Decorative image: Man walking through a busy open plan office

The U.S. labor force participation rate (LFPR) currently stands at 62.5 percent, 0.8 percentage point below its level in February 2020. This “participation gap” translates into 2.1 million workers out of the labor force. In this post, we evaluate three potential drivers of the gap: First, population aging from the baby boomers reaching retirement age puts downward pressure on participation. Second, the share of individuals of retirement age that are actually retired has risen since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, long COVID and disability more generally may induce more people to leave the labor force. We find that nearly all of the participation gap can be explained by population aging, which caused a significant rise in the number of retirements. Higher retirement rates compared to pre-COVID have had only a modest effect, while disability has virtually no effect.

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Posted at 7:00 am in Demographics, Employment, Labor Market, Unemployment | Permalink | Comments (10)
February 9, 2021

Black and White Differences in the Labor Market Recovery from COVID‑19

David Dam, Meghana Gaur, Fatih Karahan, Laura Pilossoph, and Will Schirmer

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the various measures put in place to contain it caused a rapid deterioration in labor market conditions for many workers and plunged the nation into recession. The unemployment rate increased dramatically during the COVID recession, rising from 3.5 percent in February to 14.8 percent in April, accompanied by an almost three percentage point decline in labor force participation. While the subsequent labor market recovery in the aggregate has exceeded even some of the most optimistic scenarios put forth soon after this dramatic rise, this recovery has been markedly weaker for the Black population. In this post, we document several striking differences in labor market outcomes by race and use Current Population Survey (CPS) data to better understand them.

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Posted at 11:00 am in Demographics, Equitable Growth, Human Capital, Inequality, Labor Market, Pandemic, Recession, Unemployment | Permalink

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