 There is this phenomenon of labor participation rates in the United States coming down significantly. Labor participation in the United States is basically the percentage of people, men and women of work age, who are part of the workforce. And it's an interesting—so unemployment is kind of a weird statistic because unemployment captures when they say unemployment is 4%. All that's capturing really is the number of people looking for work who are not finding it at any particular given point in time. But there are lots of people who are not looking for work. So there are lots of people who are just unemployed but not being captured by the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate, again, is only the people looking for work who are not employed. And the unemployment rate, on the other hand, just looks generally at the entire population of adults, I think 18 or over or 22 or I'm not sure where they start. Wait a minute. I can tell you. So it measures the number of people who are actively job hunting as well as those who are currently employed. It emits institutionalized people in prison, nursing homes or mental health facilities and members of the military. It includes all other people age 16 and older and compares the proportion of those who are working or seeking work outside the home to those who are either working or not seeking work outside the home. So this is—it's never going to be 100 because some people in school, if it includes 16 and over, some people might be in high school, they might be in college, and they might be retired. So—but it includes everybody basically over 16 who's not in prison, nursing homes, mental health facilities, and military. It takes those people up, but basically everybody else is included. It's kind of an interesting statistic to look historically because it's capturing a lot of different things, certain cultural changes, but it also captures demographics. So for example, in the 1950s, you know, the heyday of—I'm going to do a show on the Cold War and why both left and right long for the Cold War and want a new Cold War. You know, they might have it, but they really want it, and we'll talk about that. So idea I had this weekend. So we'll do that next week sometime. And it is interesting because both left and right both want a Cold War with China, and not for the reasons that I think might be an inevitable Cold War in China, but I think they actually actively want it because they believe it does something good to America having a Cold War. But anyway, US participation rates in the 50s and 60s until I'd say the mid-60s hovered around 58% to 60%. They kind of went up to 60% during some periods, but they hovered around there. They never really significantly went over 60%. Starting I'd say around 1969, 70, they started going up significantly up as a percentage of the population, working-age population number of people actually employed. And the primary reason for this, or one of the main reasons for this, is the fact that women entered the workforce. So if you look at women participation in the workforce in 1948 after the war, so this is after all the women who had worked during the war were laid off as the men came back, 32% of women were in the workforce. 32% of women, and I think you all know what I mean by women, 32% of women were in the workforce. By 1998, 60% of women were in the workforce. So the later participation rate during that period was driven up from around, from under 60 to around 67%, it actually peaked labor participation rate, peaked in the United States in April of 2000 at 67.3%. So a lot of that was driven by women. I think it was also driven, that rise was driven, by the baby boom entering the workforce, and by the fact that as a proportion of the population, the number of total population, the number of retirees, and the number of, well, the number of retirees really, because though the only one is accounted, was relatively low. And that, so we peaked in April of 2000. Now it's interesting that we peaked in April of 2000, because, yeah, in April 2000. Because April 2000 is also the beginning, really March of 2000 is the beginning of the dot-com crash, the NASDAQ declining significantly, the United States economy teetering. We then have 9-11 a little bit after that. And then of course we have the financial crisis in 2007. So while you get post.com bubble and post 9-11, you get a significant reduction in labor participation rate to around 66%. It spikes up a little bit in 2006, 2007. And then from there, during the financial crisis, it's just a steady decline. A steady decline, and then it starts inching up. And that's because I think of lack of economic activity, lack of good jobs. And also, another interesting phenomena is that is a decrease in participation in the workforce by women. So participation in the workforce by women peaks in, when do we say in 1998, 1999 at 60%, and then it goes down to today, it's 56.5. And then it goes down throughout the period during the Trump years. It kind of stabilizes and maybe goes up a little bit. It starts doing, going up, it starts stabilizes during Obama in 2013, 14, and then goes up a little bit in 2019. So just before COVID, it's a 63.4. But notice how big of a drop it is from the peak in 1999. Because I mean, I've told you this before, sorry, in the peak in 2000. I think the 90s, if you had to pick the era in modern times of the best economic growth, I think the 90s are it. And then it doesn't include illegal immigrants. No, I don't think it does. Just by the way it measures, it wouldn't include illegal immigrants. So February 2020, but illegal immigration starts dropping with the financial crisis. So starting in 2007, illegal immigration collapses and actually goes negative for a few years. So more illegal immigrants leave the United States and come in. And it only starts recovering sometime before COVID and now. And the nature of illegal immigration has also changed from people coming here for a variety of economic reasons to asylum seekers and the whole asylum fiasco, which I talked about in a show. The participation rates collapse almost to 60% during COVID, particularly among women it collapses. And have recovered since then and now at about 62%, 62.2, something like that. But notice 62% versus, right, 67%. That is a huge drop, huge drop. At the same time, we have over 10 million jobs that are unfilled. We have labor wages going up because they're just not enough people interested in working. So there's a fascinating dynamic right now. Fewer Americans as a percentage are working than at any time since probably the mid-1970s. And yet there are more jobs available, more vacancies in terms of jobs than maybe ever. And wages are going up at the fastest rates in a long, long time. And that combination is interesting and it's caused. So one has to ask, why, what's causing that? And then a number of things. I think one that dominates the others, but there's a number of things. One is immigration. So during COVID immigration was restricted significantly, legal immigration was restricted significantly, legal immigration continues to be restricted, the bureaucracy and trying to catch up with the pipeline, with all the COVID restrictions and stuff. It's starting to pick up. So 2022 we'll see a slight return to normal. But we will see whether it ever gets back to completely normal. But it's starting to come back slowly. But the real issue is now the baby boomers. Baby boomers were planning on working a lot longer. And it turns out that during COVID, they lost their jobs or they were sent home and they liked it. And because of all the stimulus money and because of all the help and all the... And because the stock market, while the stock market went down early in 2020, it recovered very, very quickly. They feel pretty flush. And baby boomers who thought they would not have enough money to retire, who thought that they would have to work much later, are just not going back into the labor market. They're just, they're retiring. They're figuring out how to manage with what they have. They, you know, this is even with the stock market going down this year, they're still up as compared to pre-COVID in many, you know, if they've got a nice and diversified portfolio. And the big challenge the United States has, and it's going to have over the next decade or so, is what do you do with all these jobs that are unfilled? And even if we go back to normal immigration levels, you're still not going to have enough people to fill these jobs. And, you know, this is only going to enhance jobs being, quote, outsourced, moved to Mexico or China or Vietnam or somewhere else. And because more and more baby boomers are going to be retiring. We still got, you know, most baby boomers now across the 65-year threshold, but many of them again plan to work a lot later. But it looks like it's, it looks like it ain't happening. And they are going into retirement. They're going to retirement even in the early 60s. All right. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Brook show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com slash support. 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