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The Rise and Fall of Labor Force Participation in the U.S.
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February 19, 2014
St. Louis Fed President James Bullard discussed U.S. labor
force participation during an Exchequer Club luncheon in
Washington, D.C. He concluded that demographically
based empirical models of the shape of the trend in the
labor force participation rate do a good job of explaining
the data. To the extent these models are correct, Bullard
said the unemployment rate remains a good indicator of
overall labor market health.
Speech: pdf | text (below)
Related articles in Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Review and The Regional Economist.
James Bullard
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Full text of remarks:
The Rise and Fall of Labor Force Participation in the U.S.1
Exchequer Club
Washington, D.C.
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"Rationally, let it be said in a
whisper, experience is certainly
worth more than theory."
Amerigo Vespucci
Feb. 19, 2014
Introduction
My topic for today is labor force participation in the U.S.
This has been a controversial subject in current
macroeconomic discussions, and so I will try to offer my
own perspectives on the issue.
The participation rate—a measure of the number of people
actively involved in labor markets—has generally been a
secondary concern in macroeconomics. However, with
recent sharp declines following the nancial crisis and
recession of 2007-2009, it has suddenly become a salient
topic, and one that gets discussed even in non-economic
settings. For us macroeconomists, to get one of our
variables into kitchen table discussions is really
exhilarating. We are right up there with Jimmy Fallon! We
are not used to this, and I am not sure we can comfortably
take in all of the excitement.
At its broadest level, the debate about the labor force
participation rate is a debate about the nature of the U.S.
economy over the 4½ years since the end of the recession
in the summer of 2009. Should we characterize the
economy as substantially back to normal following the very
severe recession? Or, has little progress really been made,
so that the economy remains far from its potential? There
are clear lines of argument on both sides, sometimes
blurring political boundaries. Some suggest that the
extraordinary policy response since the end of the
recession has been largely ineffectual, perhaps citing the
very at employment-to-population ratio since 2009,2 and
that their own suggested policy responses would have
produced better outcomes. Others emphasize the risk
associated with the extraordinary policy response, perhaps
citing the Fed's now $4.1 trillion balance sheet and the
nation's relatively high debt-to-GDP ratio. Still others argue
that the economy has recovered as well as can be
expected in the wake of a major nancial crisis, perhaps
citing a recovery in real consumption expenditures, an
improved housing market, a recovery in equity price
valuations, and substantially lower unemployment. This
last group might point to the euro area as an example of an
economy that has suffered through a double-dip recession
over the past several years, eventually leading to
unemployment rates exceeding 12 percent, while the U.S.
avoided this fate.
Labor market performance is at the heart of the debate
over how to characterize the state of the U.S. economy.
While unemployment in the U.S. was at 10 percent in the
fall of 2009, it has now declined to 6.6 percent on the latest
reading and has generally declined much faster than many
forecasters anticipated. In tandem with this rosy
development, however, there has been a substantial
decline in labor force participation. Some say that the
decline in labor force participation is a bad omen for U.S.
macroeconomic performance, with labor market dropouts
re ecting frustration with the state of the economy. I will
call this the "bad omen" view. Under this interpretation, the
decline in the unemployment rate does not really re ect an
improving labor market, and policymakers should look
elsewhere to measure labor market outcomes. Others,
however, argue that the decline in labor force participation
simply re ects changing demographics in the U.S.
economy, and that different demographic groups have
different propensities to participate in market work. As we
have different numbers of people in these different
demographic groups, we should naturally expect the
aggregate labor force participation rate to change. I will
call this the "demographics" view. Under this interpretation,
the unemployment rate remains about as good an indicator
of overall labor market health as ever, and recent sharp
declines in the unemployment rate should indeed be taken
as indicative of an improving economy and an improving
labor market.
In sum, the "bad omen" view sees the recent declines in
labor force participation as suggestive of a very weak labor
market and discounts the signal coming from recent
faster-than-expected declines in unemployment. The
"demographics" view sees recent declines in labor force
participation as more benign and takes the signal coming
from recent faster-than-expected declines in
unemployment at face value. Since the FOMC has explicitly
tied monetary policy choices to labor market performance,
it is of considerable importance which view is more nearly
correct.
In my talk today, I will offer three perspectives on these
questions. First, I will simply summarize the data on labor
force participation and give some background on why this
variable has suffered in relative obscurity until now.
Second, I will summarize my views on some of the
available literature concerning labor force participation as
it exists today. This literature is, in my opinion, generally
supportive of the demographics view, although there are
different strands and many issues are not satisfactorily
resolved. Third, I will talk about the future of research in
this area, which is to move to more sophisticated
approaches to labor force participation. The more
sophisticated class of models might be based on the socalled "home production" literature. I will not bore you with
the details of this approach, but I will point out that future
progress in this area has to get more serious about the
incentives of households to supply labor to market work
versus non-market work.
The Labor Force Participation Rate
The labor force participation rate is a ratio. In the
numerator is the labor force, the sum of all persons
employed or unemployed. We think of this group as
participants in the market workplace. Many have jobs, and
the rest are looking for jobs. In the denominator is the
civilian non-institutional population 16 years of age or
older.
The concept is to divide the population into three groups:
employed, unemployed and out of the labor force. This last
group could also be called "non-participants" because they
are neither working nor are they searching for market work.
Here are some round numbers to keep in your head. The
employed group is currently on the order of 145 million
people. The unemployed group is on the order of 10 million
people. And the non-participant group is on the order of 91
million people. The groups are of very different size, and in
particular, the non-participant group is large relative to the
unemployed group. A quirk of this way of organizing the
data is that people routinely report moving from nonparticipation to market work without reporting themselves
as unemployed.3 In other words, at least o cially, they
were not working and were not searching for a job but
nevertheless they ended up working at a job in the next
reporting period. Evidently, they were not really properly
categorized as "non-participants." I have always found this
to be an unsatisfactory aspect of this method of data
organization.
Many discussions of contemporary unemployment
forecasts focus on the extent to which non-participants will
rejoin the labor market. The late 1990s, for example, was
an era when many workers seemed to come off the
sidelines into the workplace because of an exceptionally
strong economy. At the St. Louis Fed, we have constructed
unemployment forecasts in recent years assuming that
movements from non-participation to employment would
be minimal while unemployment was at relatively high
levels. This has served us well, as we have more accurately
predicted declines in unemployment in the past year than
many other forecasters.
If you know only one aspect of the data on labor force
participation, it should be this: Labor force participation
used to be relatively low, it rose during the 1970s, 1980s
and 1990s, peaking in 2000, and it has generally been
declining since 2000.
From 1948 to 1966, the labor force participation rate was
relatively low and relatively stable, averaging 59.1 percent.
That's substantially lower than today's value of 63 percent.
It is important to note that we normally consider the U.S.
economy to have performed relatively well during this
period, especially during the long expansion of the 1960s.
Evidently, low labor force participation does not equate
with weak economic growth. Surely this is because the
factors driving economic growth are different from the
factors driving labor force participation.
After about three decades of trending up, the labor force
participation rate peaked in the rst half of 2000 at 67.3
percent. The rate of increase was slower in the 1990s than
it was in the 1970s or 1980s. The peak was more than 8
percentage points higher than the average level during
1948-1966. Many of the studies of labor force participation
during this period focused on the increasing participation
rates of women. However, whatever effects came from that
source, or any other source, the labor force participation
rate could not continue to increase forever. Households are
making choices about how much labor to supply given
current wages and work environments, and women newly
joining the labor force would nd the right level of
participation and stop there.
Since 2000, the labor force participation rate has generally
been declining. The pace of decline was particularly sharp
during the recession of 2007-2009, but the participation
rate also declined steadily in the early 2000s and since the
end of the recession in mid-2009.
The general picture, then, is one of a hump shape in U.S.
aggregate labor force participation during the postwar era.
A satisfactory theory has to account for this hump shape.
One way to build such a theory is to appeal to
demographics. The nation's workforce had a younger
pro le as the baby boom generation came of age, and will
have an older pro le as the baby boom generation
continues to retire. Since different age groups have
different propensities to participate, this suggests a
promising avenue to explain the labor force participation
data.
I dare say that the demographic explanation is the gut
instinct of many macroeconomists. This is why labor force
participation sits in the backseat of many macroeconomic
models. Many, including me, might reason that a good
demographic model combined with more women in the
labor force during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s could
explain a very large fraction of the hump-shaped
movements in aggregate labor force participation over the
postwar era. If such a model were tted to the data, only a
small amount of variation in the participation rate would
remain to be explained. That small remaining amount of
variation might be attributable to business cycle effects
("cyclical") or it might just be noise about the fundamental
hump-shaped trend. Relatively minor cyclical effects on
labor force participation would likely be too small to have
major macroeconomic implications given everything else
going on in a macroeconomic model. Consequently, the
thinking would go, maybe we do not need to worry too
much about the labor force participation rate.
But this is all just in the heads of macroeconomists. Let me
now turn to some of the recent research on labor force
participation to see the extent to which such a theory has
actually been devised.
Recent Research on Labor Force Participation
Let's start with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS is,
of course, very close to the data and it does routinely
project labor force participation over the medium term. In
general, its medium-term forecasts from the mid-2000s
proved to be too high, meaning its forecast labor force
participation rate was considerably higher than values
actually observed. More recent medium-term BLS
forecasts have a declining rate of participation over the
next decade or so, all the way down to 61.6 percent in
2022.4 Recall that today's participation rate is 63 percent,
so the projection is that the rate would continue to decline
by around 15 basis points per year. According to BLS
projections,5 more than 70 percent of this decline is due to
pure demographic factors; that is, changes in population
shares by age groups, assuming unchanged participation
rates for each group.6
To the extent that this forecast pans out, the basic
direction for the labor force participation rate is down, not
up. Those waiting for an upward swing in labor force
participation as the economy continues to expand will be
disappointed, on average, if this forecast comes to pass. I
read the BLS work as supportive of the demographics
hypothesis described above.
A recent contribution by Shigeru Fujita (2013) at the
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia provides some
additional insight concerning the decline in aggregate U.S.
labor force participation since 2000. Fujita's calculations
suggest that about 65 percent of the decline in the
participation rate was due to retirements and disability.
Fujita points out that the empirical evidence suggests
members of these groups have only a small probability of
returning to the labor force. If we limit attention only to a
period of relatively high economic stress, such as 2007:Q1
to 2011:Q2, we do see more of the decline in participation
attributable to discouraged workers, but even then, this is
only about 25 percent, according to Fujita's calculations.
Over a less stressful period, such as 2012:Q1 to 2013:Q2,
the entire decline in the aggregate labor force participation
rate is attributable to retirements, with no effect at all
coming from an increase in discouraged workers. I read
Fujita's contribution as also supportive of the
demographics hypothesis.
Troy Davig and José Mustre-del-Río (2013) at the Kansas
City Fed provide some analysis of the "shadow" labor
supply to gain insight into whether this group is likely to
return to the labor force. The shadow group is de ned as
those who want a job but are not actively seeking one. The
authors document that this group is demographically
similar to the unemployed. They suggest that any impact
on aggregate labor force participation from this group is
likely to be small, because ows from this group to
unemployment are small and less likely to occur as the
recovery continues. I read this as also supportive of the
demographics view.
A somewhat older paper by Stephanie Aaronson, Bruce
Fallick, Andrew Figura, Jonathan Pingle and William
Wascher, published in 2006, examined the decline in labor
force participation following the 2001 recession and tried
to ascertain how much of the decline at that time was
cyclical. It is perhaps important to recall that there was an
earlier debate on declining labor force participation, long
before the deep recession of 2007-2009. The paper
contains as part of the analysis an empirical model of the
trend labor force participation rate that includes
demographic factors. If that trend model is projected
forward to today from 2006, it predicts nearly exactly the
labor force participation rate observed in 2012 and 2013.
What a great piece of out-of-sample forecasting! I read this
as supportive of the demographics view. This model also
projects continued decline in the labor force participation
rate in the years ahead.
Marianna Kudlyak (2013), at the Richmond Fed, follows up
on the empirical model proposed by Aaronson, et al.
(2006). Again, the model contains key demographic
information such as age, gender and birth-year cohort
effects. The model suggests that current aggregate labor
force participation rates are not far off from the model's
predicted trend participation rate. Again, I read this as
supportive of the demographic view.7
Chris Erceg and Andy Levin (2013) have an interesting
International Monetary Fund working paper on the
intersection between the labor force participation rate and
monetary policy. Their paper is a "thinking outside the box"
exercise. In what I have presented so far, there is a certain
inevitable logic. I said that the data on labor force
participation cry out for an explanation based mostly on
increasing labor force participation by women and slowly
changing demographics. The existing literature more or
less provides such an explanation. Erceg and Levin instead
ask whether there are other ways to think about this issue.
They present evidence from U.S. states on prime-age
adults and suggest that the declines in labor force
participation for this particular group were mostly cyclical.
The authors then ask how monetary policy might be
conducted in a world where labor force participation has
an important cyclical component. They suggest that the
participation decision should get more attention in
monetary policy research, a point on which I will agree
below.
I do not nd the evidence on cyclical versus structural
changes in labor force participation in Erceg and Levin as
persuasive as the other empirical work I have reviewed.8
Labor force participation for prime-age males, for instance,
has also been on a secular decline for many years.
Nevertheless, the Erceg and Levin points about how to
conduct monetary policy in a world with important cyclical
components in labor force participation are well made.9
Some papers get somewhat higher estimates of the
fraction of the decline in labor force participation since
2000 due to cyclical factors. For instance, Daniel Aaronson,
Jonathan Davis and Luojia Hu (2012) use still another
empirical model with demographic factors included and
conclude that more than half of the decline in aggregate
labor force participation from 2000 to 2011 is due to
cyclical factors. Willem Van Zandweghe (2012) tries an
alternative method of decomposing the data from 20072011 and concludes that more than half of the decline is
cyclical. Julie Hotchkiss and Fernando Rios-Avila (2013)
have an approach that emphasizes non-linear factors
following the severe 2007-2009 recession, and they
conclude that nearly all of the decline in aggregate labor
force participation following the recession was cyclical.
Leila Bengali, Mary Daly and Rob Valletta (2013) look at the
correlation in the changes in employment and labor force
participation in state-level data to gain insight, concluding
that a substantial cyclical component exists in the
observed aggregate decline in labor force participation.
I am not necessarily swayed by these alternative
approaches or results. But it certainly does show that there
are many ways to cut the data and interpret the ndings.
This leads me to my nal remarks, namely, where should
the literature on labor force participation go next?
Home Production as the Future
I have reviewed some interesting economic literature on a
topic that has been hot, not just among economists, but
also among politicians, media, nancial markets and even
others who are not normally close students of
macroeconomic developments. Much of the literature I
have reviewed uses the same basic idea: Certain
demographic groups have a certain propensity to
participate in market work, and one of the main things we
need to do as economists is project the number of people
in each of these groups in order to determine a reasonable
estimate of the expected (or "normal" or "trend") labor
force participation rate in the U.S. economy. Much of the
literature concludes that demographics have contributed
substantially to the observed decline in U.S. labor force
participation since 2000.
Still, the literature as a whole is a bit hollow. Simply saying
that people in certain demographic groups tend to make
the participation decision one way or another does not do
enough to analyze the incentives of household labor supply
decisions. The more we know about the details of the
household labor supply choices, including choices to
participate in market work, the better we can predict the
impact of policy on labor force participation. Furthermore,
we would like these decisions to be part of the
macroeconomic model, as Erceg and Levin suggest.10
There is one strand of the literature that does provide a
more complete picture of household incentives to supply
labor and participate in labor markets. It is the literature on
so-called "home production." We do not need to get into the
details here, but the idea is simple. Think of a household as
the owner of capital and labor. The household members
combine their home capital—refrigerators, ovens,
dishwashers, cars, houses—with their labor time to
produce home goods, such as a trip, a meal or some child
care.11 These goods are not acquired in the market and are
not counted in GDP, but they matter to the household. The
home labor provided does not count in the aggregate
statistics on labor supply. The household then has to make
decisions about how much time to supply to market work
versus work at home, including how many members of the
household should participate in market work.12 If we add
to a household production model more explicit treatment
of household retirement decision-making as well as of
decisions by younger households to acquire human capital,
we would get to a more complete model of the labor force
participation rate.
This approach is much more detailed regarding household
decision-making than the research I have described today.
But the extra complexity comes with a bene t, as the
approach also allows macroeconomists to better
understand the factors driving household labor supply
decisions in terms of actual options inside the home, as
well as with respect to the informal labor market. More
detailed models in this direction will likely be necessary in
the future if we want to move the debate on labor force
participation forward.13
Conclusion
My topic for today has been the aggregate labor force
participation rate in the U.S. While the unemployment rate
has declined in recent years, labor force participation has
also been declining, perhaps suggesting that
unemployment is not as reliable an indicator of
macroeconomic performance as it may have been in the
past. I gave three perspectives on labor force participation:
First, I reviewed the data; second, I reviewed the literature;
and third, I suggested directions for future research.
The post-WWII data on aggregate U.S. labor force
participation show a hump-shaped pattern. Participation
rose in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, before peaking in
2000 and heading into decline up until the present day.
Current BLS projections suggest that this decline will
continue over the coming decade. The rise is often
attributed in part to the maturing of the baby boom
generation as well as the increase in the number of women
working. The decline has often been attributed to the aging
of the U.S. labor force. A satisfactory model has to account
for the rise and fall over many decades. A demographicallybased model would seem to have a good chance of
success in explaining this data.
I have reviewed some of the available literature on this
topic. My view of the literature is that carefully constructed
empirical models of the hump-shaped trend in the U.S.
labor force participation rate do a good job of explaining
the data. These models suggest that the current
participation rate is not far from the predicted trend. This
means, in turn, that the cyclical component in labor force
participation is likely to be relatively small. To the extent
these models are correct, then the observed
unemployment rate remains as good an indicator of overall
labor market health as it has been historically. In particular,
the recent, relatively rapid declines in unemployment can
be understood as representing an improving labor market.
This is the judgment that should inform monetary policy
going forward.
The literature is not completely satisfactory, however. I
concluded my talk with a brief discussion of how
researchers might do a better job of including household
decision-making inside the economic model. This would
allow us to better understand what motivates or disincents
labor force participation. I look forward to seeing research
pushing in this direction in the future.
James Bullard, President and CEO
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Endnotes
1
The views expressed here are my own and do not
necessarily re ect the views of others on the Federal Open
Market Committee. I thank my staff for helpful comments.
[back to text]
2
For a recent analysis of the employment-to-population
ratio as a labor market indicator, see Kapon and Tracy
(2014). [back to text]
3
See Canon, Kudlyak and Reed (2014) for an analysis of
the relative magnitude of the ows to employment from
unemployment and non-participation. [back to text]
4
See Toossi (2013). [back to text]
5
Author's calculation based on gures from Toossi (2013).
[back to text]
6
For more on this topic, see Canon, Debbaut and Kudlyak
(2013). [back to text]
7
A forthcoming working paper by Hornstein and Kudlyak
(2013) includes a more elaborate version of this model.
Their main nding remains that current labor force
participation rates are close to what would be predicted by
an empirical model with carefully constructed
demographic factors. [back to text]
8
For more on this issue, see Canon, Debbaut and Kudlyak
(2013). [back to text]
9
I also largely agree with the points made by Athanasios
Orphanides (2013) in a comment on the paper, in effect
that the new labor market slack indicators proposed by
Erceg and Levin would be subject to considerable
uncertainty and could lead policymakers badly astray.
[back to text]
10
For an example of a detailed macroeconomic model with
an explicit participation decision that has an impact on
policy recommendations, see Imrohoroğlu and Kitao
(2012). [back to text]
11
Time use surveys, like the American Time Use Survey
(ATUS) conducted by the BLS, provide a wealth of data to
quantify labor supplied to home production. For example,
see Aguiar and Hurst (2007). [back to text]
12
For an example of the different perspective the home
production literature provides on issues in monetary
economics, see Aruoba, Davis and Wright (2012). [back to
text]
13
For an example of the interplay between home
production and labor force participation, see Greenwood,
Seshadri and Yorukoglu (2005). [back to text]
References
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Labor Force Participation." Federal Reserve Bank of
Kansas City Economic Review, First Quarter 2012, pp.
5-34.
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