Not Ready for Prime Time

Dear Capitolisters,A common rebuttal to my and others’ insufferable economic optimism (and the many charts backing us up) is that, well, sure, things are pretty good for workers and the economy generally, but they’re really bad for large parts of the country—especially low‐​skill workers in their prime years who have dropped out of the labor force to an alarming degree. This problem is then usually blamed on various things—globalization, automation, big business, etc.—that decades of laissez faire economic policy (aka “free market fundamentalism”) have allowed. On the surface, the argument has some merit—the pre‐​pandemic labor force participation of prime‐​age American workers, especially men, has steadily declined. But, as new research shows, a deeper dive into the data paints a much more complex situation—one driven as much by government policy as by market forces, if not more so.Charting the Decline in Male Labor Force ParticipationUnderstanding the decline in labor force participation by workers in their prime.As shown in a new report from the Senate Joint Economic Committee Republicans’ Social Capital Project, there are substantial differences in the rates at which “prime‐​age” (ages 25–54) American workers have participated in the U.S. labor force over the last several decades. Probably the most notable difference is by gender, with male labor force participation steadily declining since the 1950s: