This Is Not a Better Labor Market than We Had a Year Ago This Is a Worse One

Over the past year, in the CPS Household Survey:

• The proportion of the adult population in the civilian labor force has fallen from 63.5% to 63.0%

• The proportion of the adult population employed has risen very slightly from 58.6% to 58.8%

• The unemployment rate has fallen from 7.7% to 6.7%.

As far as the long-run prosperity of America is concerned, this past year has been yet another disaster for the labor market. Demography would lead one to expect a decline in the labor force of 0.1% or 0.2% points–not 0.5%.