Just a reminder to people, over in the user guide is the code to put up a link to EP on cross posts. We are starting to hop in terms of readers but people need to find us.

It is a joke, free trade and deregulation is more like a taxpayer subsidized pass for corporations and when it comes back and bites them, once again the taxpayer is stuck with the bill for the latest debacle.

What is the percentage of foreclosures which occurred simply because of deceptive or predatory mortgages and refinancing?

I just went looking through my Labor Economics text (Borjas), and found labor force participation rates for males in 2002 at 87.1% and women at 72.7%. So something is askew here. He quotes BLS, current Population survey 2002.

But that said, I went looking for the decline in male labor participation rate. (He has this also). Now he goes on about a strong correlation to increased retirement benefits and early retirement as a cause. Then he goes on further about claiming social security disability benefits as an incentive and such an incentive the government had to make harsh requirements. uh, huh. What is Social security disability? I think that gives people enough money for bus fare to go beg on the streets during the day as I recall.

uh, I need another labor economics text after reading that. Who here believes that men are retiring earlier because of the benefits? Now haven't we read report after report (two new GAO reports right in the right hand side!) about how the United States retirement system is in deep dodo, as well as all trying or who have retired? So, I don't think so! I think age discrimination probably has a much stronger correlation on that one.

So....good question and now I need another reference for while Borjas 2002 graph doesn't match at all, his other one for does match exactly to Weavers!

I'll bet manufacturing decline does have something to do with the decrease. (although I'm not so sure for women made a lot of inroads into manufacturing, but I think women's participation slope (increase) in the labor participate rates does overlap (correlate) to the decline of US manufacturing possibly). i.e. while they are coming in, them jobs were shipping out!

I bet that our mutual alma mater will be shitting bricks when they see this. Remember I have that database with the info about the resident/non-resident/foreign national breakdown for graduate funding.

Remember that earning a masters degree here sets a foreign national up for one of those 20,000 H1Bs not linked to a specific job.

A correlation I noticed, and left out of the blog (on purpose), is the men's the long-term linear (declining) employment trend has not really changed. The long-term trend for women, shows a departure, from a historical inclining trend, in year 2000 and hasn't recovered.

Men's employment growth is continuing to decline, while Women's employment growth is now flat or possibly declining.

Possible conclusion:

If men aren't taking women's jobs and vice-versa, the other variables are employment growth/loss and population growth/loss.

There is a similar trend in the College degreed employment. Employment Growth to NCES Bachelors degree production graph. 

<Here>

The graph shows employment ratio declines starting in 2000, after seven years of very comensurate growth.

I don't have it off hand, but I know analysis of women participating it the labor market never was a displacement issue for the economy grew, women were working extensively as industrialization took off (the idea they were at home baking cookies isn't statistically accurate) and then the native population was rolling down on top of it.

and how about the number of households in the United States where there are two adults in them?

The percentage of married households is about 51%, so assuming that households have two adults to make it I'm not so sure that's a valid statistic. I mean how many people do you know who have stayed married more than 3 years? ;) I think married couples are a minority in the United States. We could up those numbers with live togethers and gay couples, long term financially joined, but still it's a huge percentage of households where it is implied there is only one adult bringing home the bacon so to speak.

But, this is a very good topic. I know the John Williams (shadowstats.com) says the unemployment rate should be 2x to 3x higher than reported and I certainly agree with that. The underemployment rate I would love for someone to expand upon further.

This tells much of the story:

This comes a report by the Cleveland Fed about labor participation rates in the US and Ohio.

The story that you get about unemployment depends a great deal on the way you calculate the labor pool. The decline in labor force participation is particularly striking when you look at men. In the 50's it was 86%, but now it's down to something like 74%.

What's driven the increasing participation rate has been increasing participation by women in the workplace. Which is positive if it reflects increased freedom for women to enter the workforce, but just might be negative if instead it indicates that families are dealing with decreasing wages by having both parents work instead of one.

I'd like to be able to go through, and run unemployment numbers state by state using the participation rate for males in 1970 (79.7% nationally) as compared to today (75.9% in 2005). If you use employment-population numbers, you get prisoners and others in the mix. There's a good argument they should be included in the unemployment numbers, but that's another discussion.

Using this release

We find that in June 2008 the male unemployment rate (over 20) was 5.8% with a 75.9% participation. This generates a male labor force of 79.291 million. If we increase the participation rate to 1970 levels, then the male labor force grows to 83.183 million. And there are 75.402 million employed in this group. Which means that using 1970 male participation rates, there are 7.781 million unemployed out of a labor force of 83.183 million.

Put another way the male unemployment rate would rise to 9.4% if the male participation rate were the same as it was in 1970. Again, 9.4% unemployment.

it's not jiving with the stats on wage decline on "native" (I didn't make up that term, it's a labor economics term to mean citizens vs. immigrants) income and the impact from immigration on their wages.

Another element here is outsourcing. We now have global sourcing of jobs which assuredly (although the stats are few and far between) have affected US employment numbers.

Anyway, I don't think one can make any correlations or conclusions from just these raw numbers, although it is interesting.

These are some wild numbers! I have to think about this, but one thing is you obviously did a lot of number crunching, which is good. First pass I don't see any holes, in your stats, but let me mull, this is making my head explode.