Mish at Global Economic Analysis says it loud and clear as well as Mike Kimel and Ken Houghton here at Angry Bear: I will stick with what I have said on many occasions “People are dropping out of the labor force at an astounding, almost unbelievable rate, holding the unemployment rate artificially low.” The reason is […]

Via Mark Thoma Tim Duy looks at reporting that misses the point even though information can be teased out of the piece. The article can be found here. I think the article would have felt better if it began not with the impression that baby boomers are the driving force behind recent declines in the […]

A really well done basic reading of the employment to population ratio is done by Bill McBride at Calculated Risk, and includes a mention of Paul Krugman’s article on the same topic. It is best to pay a visit to follow the reasoning and the detail involved. The implications are certainly also worth exploring.

UPDATE NOTE: The following isn’t complete. Many of my notes from the latter part of today’s interview can be found on Twitter, hashtagged #Immelt. At the moment, I both (1) don’t have easy access to them and (2) have other things that need to be done. Feel free to look there, and/or mention anything you […]

Bill McBride offers a look at the employment/population ratios by age at Calculated Risk, also offered at Mark Thoma’s Economist View: There will probably be some “bounce back” for both men and women (some of the recent decline is probably cyclical), but the long term trend for men is down. And several updates in graph […]

by Mike Kimel The Historical Relationship Between the Economy and the S&P 500, Part 3: The S&P 500 and the Employment to Population Ratio A few weeks ago, I had two posts looking at the relationship between the S&P 500 and real GDP (Part 1 and Part 2). The first post noted that using data […]

Calculated Risk revisits the employment to poulation ratios: …What happens to the participation rate is an important question. If the Civilian noninstitutional population (over 16 years old) grows by about 2 million per year – and the participation rate stays flat – the economy will need to add about 100 thousand jobs per month to […]

The employment report was bad, as private payroll employment only rose 83,000. Moreover, the household survey showed a drop in employment of -350,000. The unemployment rate fell. But that is because the – 350,000 fall in household survey was offset by a -652,000 drop in the labor force. A labor force contraction is really bad […]

Via (what else?) Alea’s Twitter feed, John Taylor defends himself against Ben Bernanke: “The evidence is overwhelming that those low interest rates were not only unusually low but they logically were a factor in the housing boom and therefore ultimately the bust,” Taylor, a Stanford University economist, said in an interview today in Atlanta. It’s […]

By Spencer, The employment report was very encouraging. Most importantly, aggregate hours worked were unchanged at 91.1 as compared to 104.1, 101.7 and 99.7 over the last three quarters. An unchanged reading is a massive improvement from the 8% to 9% rate of decline over the past three quarters. With positive productivity this impies that […]