. . . one of the leading indicators for a huge shift in society, employment, and a leading indicator showing the coming singularity. While similar, the top chart shows the Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate, the bottom the Ratio. One mistake nearly every analyist makes is that the huge bulge beginning in the mid 70s is the "normal." It is not. This bulge is a huge turnout of workers due to the success of the women's movement, and the colored movement. These movements were successful in changing the face of the American workforce from white males to pretty much everything. The problem the analysist don't seem to understand is that today we are far wealthier than we were in the mid 1970s. Having lived through the period, I can attest to the wealth change. Wealth brings about many changes, including the number of people who want to be involved in the workforce. The unanswered question is whether all of the people falling out of the workforce after the 2000 recession are really intent in returning to the workforce, or are we seeing a tectonic shift in the composition of the workforce? My thesis is this is a shift back to the prior normal of 56% to 56.5% (more or less) in the Ratio chart. I believe we over populated the workforce, and then reinforced this with a narrative that made it difficult to reduce the workforce numbers. The narrative was that women loved work and needed it to be fulfilled, and that men needed work or were low lifes. After the 2000, and even more after the 2007-8 recessions we saw that people began to understand that they could reduce the number of earners in a family, and still live a comfortable life. They also found having one person at home to be a tremendous benefit to the family, and with the new dynamic of needing to care for both at home children, and parents needing care, this became even more obviously valuable. The problem is that the most valuable workers are not men, or women, but a combination of the two, meaning we need a new social, and family narrative to allow men on occasion, and women on occasion to remain home to deal with the home issues. We are unready and unequipped to deal with this change today. We will need to do so soon, however. If my thesis is accurate, we will see the workforce rate stabilize at a new level which is lower than the highs of 2000, but perhaps not as low as the prior normal of 56%. On that we will have to wait and see. Today we are suffering from lower than desirable unemployment levels and this may be what is pushing the indicator from 59% to 60%, as I have said before, we need more immigrants to help us with our excess labor needs.
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