Crisis Of America's Disappearing Workforce

The Quiet Crisis Of America's Disappearing Workforce

Employment: Will the last worker in America please raise your hand? We ask this because Thursday's Labor Department report for June found yet another record collapse in the number of working Americans.

Over the past year the number of working-age Americans who have dropped from the civilian labor force has risen by 1.5 million. During Obama's presidency, the population of these Americans increased by nearly 16 million — while the labor force grew by under 3 million.

The labor force participation rate for those 16 and over dropped from 65.7% at the start of the Obama presidency to just 62.6% last month. If this rate would have remained steady, the labor force would have been nearly 14 million stronger.

Hello!
Is anyone in Washington paying attention to a trend that's becoming a national emergency?

Obama doesn't seem to get it. He's touting the unemployment rate decline to 5.3% as he celebrates how he has supposedly resurrected the U.S. economy. Here's what he isn't telling us: For every three Americans added to the working age population (16 and over), only around one new job has been created under Obama.

Where is the great American work ethic? At this pace, America will soon officially have no unemployment whatsoever. Only a few Americans will be in the labor force, but they will all have jobs. Hooray.

There are now 102 million Americans over the age of 16 who are not working. Usually when the economy picks up, American workers who have been laid off stampede back into the workforce to earn a paycheck.

Not now. The longer the recovery lasts, the larger the number of nonparticipants in the job market.

This is partially explained by baby boomers retiring — at the pace of nearly 10,000 a day. But the largest reduction in the workforce has been among those under the age of 29. Today the labor force participation rate for the 16-24 age group is 55.1%, down from 60.8% a decade ago and from more than 66% back in the late 1990s.

Millennials continue to exit the labor market — and millions have never even held a job.

Why are workers disappearing? Minimum-wage increases are pricing the young out of the workforce. The myriad welfare programs are effectively paying the young not to work.

Tens of millions of Americans have high school and even college degrees that are next to worthless to employers, because these young entrants into the labor market lack useful skills. The jobs that America should be creating — for example, in the energy industry — are being strangled by regulation and taxes.

It's simple: America can't grow and prosper if Americans aren't working.
Barack Obama famously told the nation that massive welfare benefits were a "stimulus" to the economy.

No, getting Americans working is a stimulus.

This president — who thinks he can stop the rise of the oceans — refuses to make jobs and work a priority. The next president better, or we'll go the way of Greece.