NightFox
Wildling
I don't think either one is meaningful for making comparisons with the past, the meaningful comparison would be LABOR FORCE (calculated on a constant basis) / EMPLOYED (calculated on a constant basis). If you use total population then you don't take into account things like a huge generation of people retiring (baby boomers) or variations in birth rates or variations in # of immigrants.Ummmm why do you think (Employed plus Unemployed)/population is more meaningful than employed/population? There are no differing factors.IMHO That's a meaningless statistic since all factors affecting the size of the population are not equal (retirement of the Baby Boomers, birthrates, immigration, etc..,), you need to look at labor force participation calculated using constant means if you want to make any meaningful comparison to past decades.We did just fine in the 1940's, 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's. The current Employed to Population ratio (59.2%) is higher than anytime before 1978.Actually, if you look at the number of unemployed against the actual number of able bodied people of working age in the U.S., it's around 42%. This is the worst economy of my lifetime.
That's not unemployed, that's not working, completely and totally different.
Uhm, whatever... how can we sustain a society where 42% don't work? Tomato tomato....