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Article Artículo

Economic Growth

Women

Workers

Employment Lagging for Both Men and Women

Two months ago, CEPR released a report on changes in the prime-age employment rate since the beginning of the recession in December 2007. CEPR used the prime-age employment rate rather than the unemployment rate for a specific reason: in order to be counted as unemployed, a prospective worker must “have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks.” This means that if someone has been searching for work for a long period of time, but has become dissatisfied with their prospects and hasn’t applied for any jobs over the previous month, he or she is no longer counted as “unemployed.” Paradoxically, if enough workers become discouraged with their job prospects and give up their searches for work, the unemployment rate can fall even as the job market is weakening.

In order to correct for this and other problems, it’s best to analyze rates of employment rather than unemployment. However, if we look at the employment rate for the U.S. as a whole, we miss out on the changing age distribution of the population: if the population is aging, a greater percentage of the population may hit retirement age and willingly retire, which doesn’t imply a weaker job market. Conversely, if the population is becoming younger, a greater percentage of the population may enroll in high school or college; yet this tells us nothing about employment opportunities for those who want to work. A simple way to correct for a changing age distribution is to limit one’s analysis to the “prime-age” population (Americans aged 25 to 54). The most recent job figures show that 77.1 percent of all 25-to-54 year-olds were employed in July. This means that the labor market has made up just 2.2 out of the 4.8 percentage points of prime-age employment that were lost between December 2007 and September and October of 2011.*

CEPR, Evan Butcher and Nicolas Buffie / August 11, 2015

Article Artículo

Economic Growth

United States

Latest GDP Figures Show Economy Is Years from Recovery

Last week, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released its GDP report for the second quarter of 2015. The BEA’s findings were generally positive: it reported that the economy grew at an annualized 2.30 percent rate between the first and second quarters of 2015, and it revised its first-quarter growth estimate upwards by 0.8 percentage points. Over the past year, real GDP grew 2.32 percent, in line with the second-quarter growth rate. This is 0.21 percentage points better than the average growth rate of 2.11 percent since the second quarter of 2009, when GDP hit its end-of-recession trough.

CEPR and Nicolas Buffie / August 10, 2015