The unemployment rate for prime age men (ages 25-54) is still relatively low, despite the recent upswing,. However, the percentage of non-employment (people who are either officially unemployed or not employed, but also not actively seeking work) among this group is near its post-war high, as Floyd Norris shows in his column today.
For some reason, large numbers of prime age workers have simply dropped out of the labor force, presumably because of poor employment prospects. The situation is actually probably somewhat worse than the official data imply.
There has been a big increase in the number of people who are not picked up in the Current Population Survey (CPS), the survey used to measure unemployment and employment rates. The people who are not picked up by this survey are from demographic groups, such as young African American men, that face higher rates of unemployment and lower rates of employment than the population as a whole.
My colleague, John Schmitt, compared the CPS data with data on employment from the 2000 Census and found that the CPS may be overstating employment rates by about 1 percentage point for the population as a whole, and as much as 8 percentage points for young black men.
There's too much at stake this November for us to quit. As we navigate another presidential election year, thoughtful independent journalism is more important than ever. We're committed to bringing you the latest news on what's really happening across the country this election season, shining a light on the stories corporate media overlooks and keeping the public informed about how power really works in America.
Quality reporting doesn't come for free, and we don't have corporate backers to rely on to fund our work. Everything we do is thanks to our incredible community of readers, who chip in a few dollars at a time to make what we do possible. This month, we're trying to raise $50,000 to help fuel our election coverage, and we've fallen behind on reaching our goal. Any amount you give today will bring us closer to making our reporting possible—and a generous donor has agreed to match all online donations, so your impact will be doubled.
