by Calculated Risk on 12/14/2021 09:12:00 AM
In November, Goldman Sachs economists put out a research note on the labor force participation rate: Why Isn’t Labor Force Participation Recovering?
The jobs number comes from Current Employment Statistics (CES: payroll survey), a sample of approximately 634,000 business establishments nationwide.
These are very different surveys: the CPS gives the total number of employed (and unemployed including the alternative measures), and the CES gives the total number of positions (excluding some categories like the self-employed, and a person working two jobs counts as two positions).
Click on graph for larger image.
This data is comparing November 2021 to November 2019, using Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA) data (I compared to November 2019 to minimize the seasonal impact when using NSA data).
Almost all of the missing employed workers – by this method – are in the 25 to 29 and in the 45 to 59 age groups.
Note: this is over a 2-year period, and there have been some demographic shifts between cohorts.
This data would suggest most of the missing workers are prime age or took early retirement (the missing workers in their ’50s).
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