With the labor force participation rate at 35 year lows [2] still being shrugged off as some 'cyclical' (definitely not structural) issue that will correct just around the corner, we thought it perhaps worth taking the long view, the really long view, of jobs in America. As the following two charts show, all was apparently 'sustainable' until the mid 1970s and then things changed...
200 Years of unskilled wages... and GDP
[3]
but when did the break really start?
[4]
Makes us think about this... [5]
It would seem, as we have noted numerous times, yet more proof that since the 1980s the bulk of economic output is indeed credit-driven.
Source: Visualizing Economics [6] [6]