
Hours Worked by Women Age 55 to 61 Confound Labor Market Analysis - luu
https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2019/1126.aspx
======
jcims
Wouldn't you think it would be interesting to the analysis that prior to the
Great Recession point, the LIUR growth rate for 55-61 segment was notably
higher than any other segment on the chart? And that in the post-recession era
the absolute recovery is on par with the rest?

At least they provided the raw data to make merging all four sets together
quite simple:

[https://imgur.com/a/Quw4tFg](https://imgur.com/a/Quw4tFg)

Anecdote time...my mom is 68, has a high school education and was able to land
five different jobs over the past five years. She's picky, so she ends up
quitting them, but after 15 years running the office for a wholesale seed
distributor she ran a small store, ran a restaurant, was a picker in a
pharmaceutical fulfillment shop, etc etc in a relatively depressed town in
Ohio. They were just supplemental income $12-18/hr, but jobs are out there for
women in this bracket if they want them. She decided she didn't want them and
retired two years ago. Now she farts around the house and agitates my step
dad.

Edit: The question really should be why was that segment on fire for the
previous years. BLS chart for a longer time scale:

[https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v72n1/v72n1p1-chart01.gi...](https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v72n1/v72n1p1-chart01.gif)

~~~
Majromax
> Edit: The question really should be why was that segment on fire for the
> previous years. BLS chart for a longer time scale:

Wouldn't the leading order effect be the time-lag of the increase in
employment for 25-54yo women?

In the year 2000, the employment rate for the 55-64 group matched the 1970
employment rate for the 25-54 group.

~~~
jcims
Yeah it’s like there’s a generation or two of ass-kicking women working their
way through the brackets. They started hitting the low one on the 70’s and
filtering into the 55-61 bracket in the mid 90's. Maybe they just aged out
around the time of the recession.

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dv_dt
I suspect this age group is one that is relied upon for care (some would say
it's a societal expectation/burden) - either daycare for grandchildren or
caregiving for aged parents. The need for both of which would increase when
extended families are stressed by economic conditions. Sort of mindboggling
that this barely even gets touched upon as a hypothesis in this economic
analysis (maybe I'm missing it in the article, rereading now...)

~~~
SubiculumCode
This is what I immediately thought about. In my case, I was thinking about
grandma taking care of children of drug addicted parents, which there are
increasing numbers of ever since the Great Recession.

~~~
dv_dt
I was thinking more parents working two jobs with inflexible schedules, but
yes that too.

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AnimalMuppet
Chart 1 is interesting. It shows "labor input utilization" (that is, how much
people are actually working) _finally_ almost catching up to long-term trend
after the 2008 crash. Maybe now we can get some wage inflation!

~~~
nhebb
> Maybe now we can get some wage inflation!

We have been. Real (inflation adjusted) median household income has been going
up in recent years, from ~$57k / household in 2014 to ~$63k / household in
2018:

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N/](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N/)

~~~
runako
I may be reading this wrong, but it looks like that chart (combined with the
OP charts) says that median hourly income is just a hair over where it was in
1999. The trend is positive, but it looks like the median income is basically
going up because people are working more hours (i.e. and not because of
significant wage inflation).

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mcguire
[https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2019/~/media/Im...](https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2019/~/media/Images/research/economics/2019/1126/dfe1126c3.png)

Whoa. That is one of the most dramatic charts I've ever seen.

Anyway, from the linked paper:

" _Conceptually, the LIUR is the measure of labor input adopted in balanced-
growth theory and inspired by evidence suggesting that, in many economies, key
macro-economic variables have grown at a common rate for long periods. One of
the most intriguing features of that evidence is that the resulting secular
rising trend in the average real wage has typically failed to induce any
noticeable trend in the share of available time that the working-age
population devotes to work._

" _The share of available time devoted to work is the LIUR, calculated as the
total number of hours that the working-age population (16 years of age and
older) was actually at work relative to discretion-ary hours—100 hours a week
on average per working-age individual—that that population could have devoted
to work.3 The numerator—hours at work—excludes hours paid while on vacation or
on vari-ous leaves that do not contribute any labor input to the production
process._ "

Could someone go into some detail, explaining the LIUR? I get that it's
"available" hours divided by hours worked, but...

* " _One of the most intriguing features of that evidence is that the resulting secular rising trend in the average real wage has typically failed to induce any noticeable trend in the share of available time that the working-age population devotes to work._ "

What "secular rising trend in the average real wage"?

* " _100 hours a week on average per working-age individual_ "

Should we celebrate or protest when the LIUR increases? If real wages are
increasing, but LIUR isn't, then economic theory asserts that labor has maxed
out its working hours and cannot work more to capture the higher wages? Or has
maxed out its preference for those wages in favor of something else?

~~~
zanny
> Should we celebrate or protest when the LIUR increases?

By itself the metric seems pointless. For anyone looking at it. Participation
does not imply utility or value - wartime nations would present extreme LIURs
but building bombs doesn't translate into economic prosperity. Likewise, if
people aren't working because there is no work to be done or because they
value their non-GDP-influencing activities by choice that is only a good
thing.

It looks like the kind of metric a C level fawns over to masquerade what looks
like productivity when it doesn't actually have to be.

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poulsbohemian
Anecdote ahead:

Just last night I was talking to two friends in this age group about their
career situations, which match that of others I've spoken with in the same
boat. They are exhausted from their primary career, _probably_ have enough
money that they could retire, but what they really want is some kind of work
that will get them out of the house a few days each week and put a few coins
in their pocket, but doesn't need to be a "career" any longer.

Pure speculation on my part, but I'm led to wonder if there just aren't
sufficient employer accommodations being made to this age category. When I
think about people I know - some have stuck it out and been miserable, others
have just left for early retirement. So whereas millennials are asking for and
getting remote work, the late boomers / early X's might be wanting to simply
work less but are faced with no real choice.

~~~
bastardchild
Especially if your primary goal is the social factor and the "having a
schedule for a few hours a day"-thing (which I completely understand) and
getting some money out of it is secondary, I guess a lot of people in that
demographic might just opt for volunteering.

True, it completely fails to pay any bills, but depending on what you do, you
might get some everyday benefits out of it and it's a lot less annoying and
exhausting than many jobs you could do elsewhere. Plus, nobody bats an eye if
you decide to go from one volunteering gig to another after a few months,
after all you're doing it for free. Switching jobs is more of a hassle.

As far as I can see, this kind of working hours isn't accounted for in these
charts and I see that group as prime candidates for deciding that none-paying
but nice, meaningful work is better than pushing numbers for another few years
when you could make do without it.

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adinb
Is this the pattern we're going to start seeing with different subpopulations
being laid off due to automation?

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peter303
I distrust some graphs that dont start at zero origin. The trend is magnified
then.

~~~
recursive
And temperature graphs should always use kelvin.

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buffaloo
tldr; Without quite realizing it, these geniuses figured out who is actually
raising a generation of the children of single moms.

~~~
dang
Could you please review the site guidelines? One thing they ask is _Don 't be
snarky_. Your point here could have been the kernel of a more substantive and
fine comment, but we definitely don't need swipey one-liners with ideological
overtones.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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williamDafoe
Unemployment has become a bullshit political statistic designed to exclude
minorities, which became the racist standard Under Clinton with the
introduction of "discouraged" workers (not employed and not unemployed!). A
much more meaningful number is the employment population ratio, age 25-54, can
you see the big difference Trump made? I knew you couldn't ...
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060)

~~~
zanny
Having all of your population employed isn't even necessarily a good thing.
You can see low participation in the metered labor market when individuals are
prosperous, well off, and self sufficient enough to avoid the rat race. It
only means more poverty when lower employment means lower wealth.

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TurkishPoptart
Can someone summarize what's going on here in plain English? I can't
understand this article or these charts.

~~~
williamDafoe
Women aged 55-61 had been growing the percent of their daily life spent
working from 17% to 21.5% but something happened in 2007 and the growth trend
slowed drastically so that today they spend only about 22.5% of their life
working. Had the trend continued they would be spending 25% of their lives
working, today.

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taneq
The "unemployment rate" is a nearly meaningless number that gets re-defined
and manipulated by whoever's talking to make whatever point they want to make.
It's nearly useless for figuring out how many people aren't working that
could, or how many people want work but can't get it.

~~~
roenxi
And how many people should be working. In a perfect world maybe people should
only be working for a couple of months a year for social reasons.

That would show up in the statistics as mass unemployment and total economic
collapse.

~~~
astura
False, if someone is not working because they don't want to work, they
wouldn't be counted in the "unemployment" number (U3).

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larnmar
Women in that age group probably have a higher fraction of “hobby workers”
than any other demographic group —- people who don’t really _need_ to work
(since they’re already wealthy enough and their husbands earn far more anyway)
but choose to work a few hours a week just for something to do.

If times are good and families are wealthy, the number of hobbyist workers in
the older female age group increases. If times are bad, these women might be
forced to work more hours or even full time in order to make ends meet.

It makes sense that their LIUR is flat compared to other groups.

~~~
chongli
Your hypothesis is interesting but it doesn’t fit the data. The flattened
trend for this age group began suddenly during the Great Recession of 2008.

I think it’s more likely that a lot of women in this age group suddenly lost
their jobs in the Great Recession and never recovered.

~~~
Armisael16
The category is only six years wide. The oldest people in it entered the
category in 2013; none of them were of age in 2008. Your thesis only makes
sense if you state that the Great Recession induced/exacerbated employer
discrimination against this particular group of people.

~~~
chongli
It doesn’t say that at all. Different demographics are not employed equally
across all sectors of the economy. In all likelihood, women of this age group
were employed in precarious positions which crumbled during the recession. Due
to their age, retraining might not have been a viable option, so they stayed
home. None of this requires discrimination at all.

~~~
Spooky23
Exactly. What else started collapsing in that period?

A: Retail

