Claims that the Bulk of the Post-2008 Decline in Labor Force Participation Are “Structural” Need to Surmount a Very High Bar Indeed: Friday Focus for September 5, 2014

Claims that most of the decline in labor-force participation since 2008:

are “structural” have always seemed to me to run aground, hole themselves, and sink on the reef that is the 25-54 labor-force participation rate. I have been reading the 25-54 labor-force participation rate since 1980:

as showing three things: First, a steep increase from feminism from 1980-1990:

Second, a plateau or perhaps very slow decline from incipient “peak male” and higher post-graduate education rates from 1990 to 2008, with participation bulging because of cyclical factors during the boom of the late 1990s and slumping because of cyclical factors during the jobless recovery of the mid-2000s:

And, third, a collapse starting with the 2008 financial crisis driven by the awful cyclical state and labor-side hysteresis resulting therefrom:

The claim that what has happened to 25-54 participation since 2008 is simply a continuation and acceleration of structural trends that had been ongoing since 1990 would have to surmount a very high bar indeed for me to find it credible:

Nor do I see a credible gender-difference story: we need a structural account for both an acceleration in the “peak male” decline in male 25-54 activity and for the pullback–without changing fertility behavior–in female activity from the values it has had since 1995:

And if there is a 2%-point gap between 25-54 participation today and a “structural” projection back in 2008 of what it would be today, doesn’t that tell us a lot about the size of structural shifts since 2008 in the broader adult employment-to-population ratio?