By now everyone knows that the simple reason why the US employment picture is so pathetic despite the endless propaganda spin (as the Democrats just found out earlier this week in a truly historic mid-term drubbing), and why there is no wage growth, is due to the aged portion of the labor force, those 55 and over, and which would otherwise be retiring, refusing to quit their jobs and, well, retire for one simple reason: ZIRP has destroyed the product of their lifetime work, their savings, and since tens of millions of Americans in their golden years can't rely on a cash flow stream from their savings and retire, they are forced to keep working to an ever older age.
This can be seen not only in the chart of record workers aged 55 and over...
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... but also in the persistent peak of the labor force participation if only for those 55 and over, which unlike the participation rate for the broader population simply refuses to decline.
[4]
None of the above is by now surprising, and has nothing to do with the strangest data point in today's jobs report, which nonetheless has to do with the age composition of the jobs report, because we find that of the nearly 700K (683,000 to be "precise") increase in October jobs according to the Household survey, a whopping 528K jobs were as a result of (seasonally-adjusted) workers aged 16-24 finding a job.
This is shown in the chart below: it is also the biggest monthly jump in young workers in the past decade, and one of the highest in history.
[5]
One wonders: just where did this near record surge in youth hiring come from in month of October?
