STUMP » Articles » Labor force participation rates, part 4: Old v. Young » 2 July 2014, 01:27

So after looking at decreasing labor force participation rates among the young and increasing labor force participation rates among the old, let’s do direct comparisons.

I am comparing those under age 25 against those age 55-64. Because of similarity in colors/styles, I have put dots on the youngsters’ graphed data so they are easier to distinguish from the oldsters.

Females:

Males:

Comments on the trends: the decreasing rate for women age 20-24 and the increasing rate for women age 55-59 converged to the same level recently. They seem to be equal currently. For men, we see the participation rate for age 55-59 has exceeded those age 20-24. As mentioned in the earlier post, it seems young men are having trouble “launching”.

And it’s not really a big case of older men not retiring preventing the youngsters from entering, as those age 55-59 have a fairly flat labor participation rate in recent years. It’s more that the younger groups have had huge decreases in their participation rates. It’s much more extreme for teenagers than for those age 20-24, even with the full scale from 0 to 100, one sees the large decrease.

For my next, and final (for now) post on these rates, we will look at the gender gap.