Briefly, the Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate measures all non-institutionalized (ie. Not imprisoned or hospitalized, or in hospice care) civilian (ie. non-military) aged 16 and up with no upper bound, who are participating in the labor force (ie. working, or looking for work), divided by the number of all such persons. So how did I come to the self-discovery that I am the cause of the drop in LFPR and thus public enemy #1 of America? Simple- I calculated my own Labor Force Participation Rate.
In the 50's somebody like me would be called a Square. Somebody who played by the rules and never stepped an inch out of bounds. I went to school from infancy until I graduated with a master's degree in Electrical Engineering at age 24. From age 16 to 24, I spent 6 summers working full time. From age 24 to now I have been either gainfully employed or looking for work. At no time did I take a break to slack off, take an extra year to graduate college, sail the world, discover myself, stay home as a house-husband, feign disability or do any of those other things commonly suspected of Labor Force non-participators. Further, I plan to continue working until my full retirement age of 67, when Siri X finally escorts me out of my virtual office. According to the Society of Actuaries, a 65 year old white collar male today, can expect to live out to 88.1 years of age. No doubt this life expectancy number will be even higher by the time I retire 22 years from now. But to err on the side of caution 88.1 it will be.
To recap, I will have spent 88.1 - 16 = 72.1 years as a non-institutionalized civilian. Of that I will have spent 67 - 24 + (6 * 0.25) = 44.5 years in the labor force. This gives me a lifetime Labor Force Participation Rate of 44.5 / 72.1 = 61.7%.
Me. Mr. Model A. Citizen. A man who has lived the American Middle Class life by the book, who has never slacked off or taken advantage of any public programs, who hasn't even taken all his annual vacation days in any of the last dozen years. A man who has never so much as walked out of the house with more than one top button undone. I have a lower labor participation rate than our nation as a whole. If you are reading this, you are welcome to follow along and compute your own labor participation rate. Most of you will come to a similar number. Independent of the tsunami of baby boomers retiring, which many people have rightly pegged as the biggest driver of LFPR drop post-recession; the Labor Force Participation is bound to drop as a necessary consequence of lower mortality at every age and higher life expectancy at retirement, and secondarily of people spending more years in higher education. And not, as popularly imagined, due to an inexplicable epidemic of slack.
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