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One True Measure Of Stagnation: Not In The Labor Force
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
One True Measure of Stagnation: Not in the Labor Force
This is a stark depiction of underlying stagnation: paid work is not being created as population expands.
Heroic efforts are being made to cloak the stagnation of the U.S. economy. One of these is to shift the unemployed work force from the negative-sounding jobless category to the benign-sounding Not in the Labor Force (NILF) category.
But re-labeling stagnation does not magically transform a stagnant economy. To get a sense of long-term stagnation, let's look at the data going back 38 years, to 1977.
NOT IN LABOR FORCE (NILF) 1976 to 2015
I've selected data from three representative eras:
- The 20-year period from 1977 to 1997, as this encompasses a variety of macro-economic conditions: five years of stagflation and two back-to-back recessions (1977 - 1982), strong growth from 1983 to 1990, a mild recession in 1991, and growth from 1993 to 1997.
- The period of broad-based expansion from 1982 to 2000
- The period 2000 to 2015, an era characterized by bubbles, post-bubble crises and low-growth "recovery"
In all cases, I list the Not in Labor Force (NILF) data and the population of the U.S.
1977-01-01: 61.491 million NILF population 220 million
1997-01-01 67.968 million NILF population 272 million
Population rose 52 million 23.6%
NILF rose 6.477 million 10.5%
1982-07-01 59.838 million NILF (start of boom) population 232 million
2000-07-01 68.880 million NILF (end of boom) population 282 million
Population rose 50 million 22.4%
NILF rose 9.042 million 15.1%
2000-07-01 68.880 million NILF population 282 million
2015-09-01 94.718 million NILF ("recovery") population 322 million
Population rose 40 million 14.2%
NILF rose 25.838 million 37.5%
Notice how population growth was 23.6% 1977-1997 while growth of NILF was a mere 10.5% As the population grew, job growth kept NILF to a low rate of expansion. While the population soared by 52 million, only 6.5 million people were added to NILF.
In the golden era of 1982 - 2000, population rose 22.4% while NILF expanded by 15%. Job growth was still strong enough to limit NILF expansion. The population grew by 50 million while NILF expanded by 9 million.
But by the present era, Not in the Labor Force expanded by 37.5% while population grew by only 14.2%. This chart shows the difference between the two eras: those Not in the Labor Force soared by an unprecedented 26 million people--a staggering 15.6% of the nation's work force of 166 million. (Roughly 140 million people have some sort of employment or self-employment, though millions of these earn less than $10,000 a year, so classifying them as "employed" is a bit of a stretch).
This is a stark depiction of underlying stagnation: paid work is not being created as population expands. Those lacking paid work are not just impoverished; they lose the skills and will to work, a loss to the nation in more than economic vitality.
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who cares.....mr yellen signaled buybacks are ok again.
The consumer's and their economy are in big trouble, the markets, not so much (they have the Fed). I think we are entering a new era in "compartmentalized economies".
NILF <= MILF?
So we just need like 25 million more jobs?
We have to start thinking up names for this depression. Has to be good and reflect the fact that nobody in power will admit it due to it being papered over.
Dogshit under the rug depression.
Still in the closet depression.
I can't believe it's not depression.
pods
antiprotuberant expansion
What would mister (mister) yellen say?
I would emphasize the implications of the model for the short-run trade- off between inflation and unemployment, even where there are rational expectations. Indeed that is precisely the stance later taken by Taylor. My assertion of the existence of a long-run trade-off between inflation and unemployment in the paper is wrong in my current view, since I view that trade-off as extremely small in the model. In the model, at zero inflation the long-run marginal trade-off between output and inflation is exactly zero. Only later, Bill Dickens, George Perry and I (see below) discovered how similar models would produce significant long-run trade-offs between inflation and unemployment, especially when inflation is low.
page 15
http://2011.szsaae.org/%2Fupload%2F1380944242_Akerlof2005.pdf
EXPLORATIONS IN PRAGMATIC ECONOMICS:
To Janet L. Yellen: The Light of my Life
GEORGE A. AKERLOF
Go to your gym during working hours for hard breathing sweaty NILF MILF action.
NILF Depression.
isn't that by coincidence the number of illegals here?
The Courage to Act Depression.
NILF = needs new acronym. Sheeple I Fucked (SHIF)
Serfs and serfdom. Moats and castles.
All come to mind when thinking of present-day Amerikkka.
Nothing but good propaganda for the affirmitive action hire.
Yeah, it sucks being unemployed, white, and over 50.
Even the cougars don't want you...
;-(
Fits me to a t... the wife's ready to kick my ass to the curb!
Debt-money is a zero-sum game. It is a balance sheet.
For every monetary unit of asset money (what is spendable), there is a monetary unit of debt that someone owes to someone else (primarily to the corporate banking fronts that generate trillions, interest free to themselves, and lend it to society in the first instance).
One person's monetary net asset is, by definition, some other person or person's inextinguishable debt.
It is all a prima facie fraud.
Casino Debt
http://www.weaponsofmassdebt.com/index.php/blog/casino-debt/
When Money Is Debt, Wealth Is Poverty
http://www.weaponsofmassdebt.com/index.php/blog/when-money-debt-wealth-p...
Kudos to Satan's (literal or figurative) human forces on Earth... they've set up the next generation of the Death Star right here on Earth... Behold, the Debt Star. It is like a neutron bomb version of the Death Star as it leaves the planet's resources intact in order to plunder them.
The average person is clueless to what is being erected all around them.
While the system is amazing, it is evil and all the functionaries who participate in it are creating some bad mojo from which they will not be able to hide forever.
To all the functionaries of this demonic system... when you spend all day being told to lie to everyone else, are you really so naive to believe that what you are being told isn't a lie, too?
Oh, and Krugman knows all about the monetary fraud... that's why he warned Lietaer about discussing "money."
Krugman to Lietaer: "Never touch the money system!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6nL9elK0EY
It's all a con, and one that is so big that the average person ASSumes it can't exist. Well, it does. The grade school level mathematics doesn't lie, although, you may lie to yourself. Orwell called that mechanism "crimestop."
crimestop - Orwell's definition: "The faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. In short....protective stupidity."
http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-dict.html
It's even worse than a zero-sum game.
Because, if all money is debt with interest attached, then by definition the money-lenders will eventually own everything, because eventually a society will reach the point when the interest has become infinite.
hi r00t61,
I get your point, but the zero-sum game is sufficient to bankrupt and asset strip society such that most in society are clueless.
Note that specie is not debt based. Did you every hear anyone explain why FRNs are debt based but specie is not debt based? I haven't.
I have a theory, though. A certain percentage of FRNs are lost... fires, lost in the wilderness, buried never to be recovered and probably even boating accidents.
Debt free specie is able to replace the lost debt based money without causing too much disruption. It performs the action similar to that of a control rod in a nuclear reactor.
Much the same with residential real estate --- it's all 'regional'. Which is of course, a polite way of saying that America is head-long devolving into a 2-class society, much like their neighbors to the south. Hmmm...
I've been thinking about getting a 10$ an hour job and going on foodstamps, just can't pull the trigger...On a side note, WTF is up with silver these past few days, something doesn't seem normal.
They make money going up and going down. Buckle up little buckaroo
Many things don't seem normal. But somehow, they are.
Believe it or not, Silver can also go UP in price, from time to time.
I know it sound preposterous, but I've seen it before, with my own eyes.
In fact, I'll tell you a bedtime story some day about when I bought Silver for $30 a Troy Ounce.
I, for one, would like to welcome our new COMEX overlords.
Every effort to keep lipstick on the pig.
The pig's dead Jim!
looks like exponential fun to me
Guys, the plan is working. Those are millions of captured voters who will consistently vote for the best 'free shit' package available. Of course, when you're a duopoly competing for that business, you can take all the freedoms you want and payout mere pennies. . .
The "free shit package" has been masterfully positioned as the number one selling point in the West
MOAR DEBT!!!!
"There has never been a better time to go on Welfare"
- NAR
Hey, it's all income and you can qualify for a mortgage. In fact, welfare recipients are easy to qualify because we know they can never be fired and their income can never go down.
Huh... Never thought of it like that... is that true? Are you an RE guy? Seems like they would have rules against something like that.... then again, they got rid of the rules, didn't they?
Not a RE guy, but as an RIA, you run into mortgage/home questions a lot so you have to know a thing or two about it.
The CURRENT answer is no. You can get assistance if you BECOME unemployed (both state and federal programs), but you generally won't get approved for a mortgage if you're on the dole.
HOWEVER... the Thinman in the WH is looking to change that. Here's a little info on his proposal to give mortgages to Sec8 housing recipients:
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/051415-752725-cfpb-warns-home-l...
Jesus Harold Christ on a rubber crutch that isn't actually an Onion piece?
Just cause they can't afford rent doesn't mean they can't afford a mortgage?
Get me the fuck outta this clownshow.
pods
What? You thought he was going to stop at endless wefare benefits and free Obamaphones?
"Owning a home is a basic human right."
Thanks Captain obvious!
Remember this guy?
"ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
Yea,,, he died.
He was killed, important distinction.
Yes his head exploded, they show the film to new presidents on there first day in the White House as a "motivational tool".
Friedman on Kennedy
In a much quoted passage in his inaugural address, President Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country." It is a striking sign of the temper of our times that the controversy about this passage centered on its origin and not on its content. Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic "what your country can do for you" implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man's belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, "what you can do for your country" implies that government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshiped and served. He recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive.
NILFs expand when you already have enough and do not need anybody else to produce.
Now crunch the economy and watch the NILFs rise, that is all that has happened as efficiences to attempt to maintain profitabilitiy reduces the employed. The crash in 2008 forced all to cut costs and the one thing to cut and not affect the product is labor.
Now it is set, you ain't absorbing those NILFs because you have now adopted a new level of efficiency and if as I suspect we start to crash again the level of NILFs will rise again.
The arise of the NILF, the NILF attacks, the NILF revenge, hell you could write a whole series of books on NILFs.
Find enough MILF NILFs and you can be the Roger Corman of sexploitation.
Germany took a practical approach to the NILF MILF population: turned 'em out to work the corner! Presto, change-o, they were BACK in the labor force, only occasionally taking it in the ass.
http://feministing.com/2005/01/31/become_a_prostitute_or_lose_yo/
He'll like you. You're a helluva piece of furniture.
+1 for the Soylent Green reference. Classic.
DOW 17000 by Close?
BTFD,,, Janets on her monthly.
What's after NILF? NULLF? NaNF? I am not a number, I am a free man
"I'll be seeing you." -- #6
Since Obama took office we have been on the Keynesian bullet train. Japan's experiment with Keynesianism failed, the US experiment with it in the 1930 failed, Greece's experiment failed, Wiemar's experiment failed, Spain is swirling around the bowl, every time government's print money and give it to their cronies, somehow economies crumble. Maybe it'll work this time around if we keep at it... like it did in Japan.
Anything but that dreaded Austrian theory!
The difference between the two approaches to monetary policy is that one of them requires acceptance of personal and corporate and governmental responsibility. I reckon you know which one of them it is, and why we are subjected to the other.
"This is a stark depiction of underlying stagnation"
Seems to me to be a stark depiction of an over expanding population pitted against technology.
...coupled with demonization of capitalism and endless advocacy for socialism.
The 1% need the entire 99% not in the labour force because they're rolling out the robots and robots don't need paychecks, Obamacare or 401Ks. Think future, think corporate welfare and go quietly.
But who will buy the products that the robots produce?
Yeah, like about a dozen have already said, automation and other structural changes are happening.
So here comes the minimum guaranteed income for all.
This process has been foreseen in science fiction for at least fifty years.
But now it's not just socialism, it's economic necessity and technological progress. Or maybe that episode from TOS, "I, Mudd!"
Or this excellent episode of Black Mirror. Truthiest thing I have seen since Idiocracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits
Seems to me like we should make it 1) harder to work and 2) more profitable not too. That should reverse the trend.
So you're telling me 25.8 million Americans could be harvested by an alien fleet just passing through your solar system and it would improve your economy?