Presumably the chart above, gleaned from this post at Bloomberg is intended to convince us that all young Americans should pursue college educations. IMO the chart would be more helpful if its granulation were a bit finer. If it disaggregated bachelors only from bachelors or more, we might be able to distinguish whether people with college degrees were participating in the labor force at a higher rate or whether those with post-graduate and, especially, professional degrees were participating at a very high rate indeed.
Additionally, it would be interesting if the graph distinguished between native and non-native individuals. Since more than 50% of immigrants have high school educations or less the rapidly falling labor force participation rate for those with high school educations or less might just mean that the demand for such workers is falling while the supply is increasing, bolstered by 25 million immigrants. We just can’t tell from the graph.
Note, too, that the long-term trend is down regardless of the level of educational attainment and that’s been true for a very long time.
The text of the post itself contributes this:
Unfortunately, some public policies have made things worse. Thanks to background checks, for example, the burgeoning ranks of men with criminal records — some for transgressions as minor as marijuana possession — are effectively locked out of the labor market.
Occupational licensing has also created barriers, requiring people to invest in a time-consuming and expensive process before entering fields ranging from haircuts and interior design to law and medicine. Too many licenses have evolved as a way to protect incumbent workers at the expense of new entrants. Since licensing laws vary by state, they also make it harder for workers to move to where the jobs are.
When you add the deadweight loss created by massive healthcare subsidies, patents and royalties, regulations, and other government intervention in the economy, it’s clear that government at all levels is a substantial part of the problem.
I’m not an anarcho-capitalist or a minarchist. I believe that government is necessary for human well-being including the effective functioning of the economy. But we really need to do better at the business of governing. I attribute the problem to ideology. How about giving evidence-based government a try?
Whose evidence and what standards do we use? Appeals to authority work mainly on students looking to keep up the GPA.
A couple years old, but there’s this:
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2014/02/06-america-isnt-working-unemployed-men-wessel
Also, looking at 2013 census data (the most current), there are about 62 million men in this age group. So for a 97% participation that’s a bit under 2 million not participating. At an 83% participation rate the number not participating is about 10.5 million. The difference of 7-8 million is a lot of people.
Andy’s link goes on to mention what I think is a contributing factor- women in the workplace. Alongside the falling employment numbers for men, so many more women were entering the workplace during the three last decades of the twentieth century. For a while the economy kept pace, but after the crash, not so much. Since more women are employed in subsidized sectors like healthcare and education, while men dominate in construction, manufacturing, and tech, the male dominated jobs have been affected most and haven’t rebounded.
You can’t subsidize everything. Healthcare and education are massively subsidized—to the tune of $2 trillion per year.
Agree…the subsidies represent one form of misallowcated resources, and I’m hypothesizing that they disproportionately prop up employment of females compared to males.