Furthermore, the projections were wrong. Participation has actually risen among people older than 55. The decline is entirely driven by younger dropouts.
The federal government counts 11.7 million Americans as unemployed. The real number, it follows, is more like 17 million.
There is always some unemployment. Millions of Americans are out of work at any given moment even in the best of times. But the economy is still roughly 10 million jobs short of returning to normal levels of unemployment and labor force participation. That’s a lot of missing jobs.
Some of those losses may be permanent. The number of Americans receiving disability benefits has increased by 1.8 million since the recession began, and people on disability rarely return to the work force, even if they would have preferred to keep working in the first place.
And as the economy improves, it is likely that labor force participation among older workers will finally begin to decline.
But the evidence suggests that the majority of the 10 million are just waiting for a decent chance.
Article Appeared @http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/keeping-up-not-getting-ahead/?hp