November 28, 2016
Hey, why should he be left out? He repeats the story about prime age (ages 25–54) men dropping out of the workforce. As noted here before, since 2000 there has been a comparable drop in employment rates for prime-age women. It is important to add in this respect that employment rates for women had been rising before 2000 and were almost universally expected to continue to rise. In other words, there is a simple story where the drop in both men and women’s employment rates is due to a weak labor market, but hey that’s too easy, let’s see if we can blame the workers rather than the folks who make economic policy.
The other point where Samuelson is misleading is in citing the claim that government benefits, like disability payments, are a possible reason that men have been dropping out. While he notes that the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) argued against this by noting that these benefits had not risen rapidly enough to explain the increase in the drop out rate, it also would have been worth noting the rest of the argument. The CEA also pointed out that the United States ranks near the bottom of OECD countries in the generosity of its benefits, but it also ranks near the bottom in labor force participation rates for prime-age workers. In other words, that doesn’t sound like a very plausible explanation.
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