Comments on: The LFPR Gets Its Day in the Sun

By: SARA SIKES

SARA SIKES — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:03:40 +0000

I suppose this is hard to measure, bur I wonder what % increase there is in people working “off the books.” Some of my friends who are in their 60′s and unemployed longterm have resorted to this undesirable solution.

By: Fred Donaldson

Fred Donaldson — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 12:53:35 +0000

When there are good jobs available, you may not decide to retire early at 62. In the opposite scenario, you retire early so you have money to pay your bills.

There is also an uptick in disability claims, when folks become desperate and less likely to put up with pain, as they would if they had a decent job.

Finally, many people won’t admit they have failed at getting a job after many months of looking. It’s less humiliating to just say you aren’t in the market for a job. People often tell pollsters what they think the pollsters want to hear.

By: LdeG

LdeG — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 00:57:55 +0000

I took a look last week at the employment-population ratio (which makes more sense to me – I’m not an economist, but it seems to me that figuring out who is in and out of the workforce is problematic.) Employment to population is growing. Also, over the long term, the percentage of the male population employed has trended consistently down, mirroring the upward female trend. I don’t think analysts have been paying enough attention to the interactions between women entering the workforce, men leaving, boomer retirements, and the recession. At the beginning of the recession, none of the boomers were eligible even for reduced Social Security; now the oldest ones are. And most of those retiring were of the silent generation where many fewer men had wives who were also working.

By: D. C. Sessions

D. C. Sessions — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 22:38:04 +0000

Some of that structural decline in LPFR is still short-lived (huh?)

Quite a few, including my partner, are retiring early because they don’t see much chance of being re-employed in the next three or four years and some income now beats slightly more later.

And in a few years, they’re out of the “working years” demographic denominator.