IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedbpb/y2013n13-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cyclical versus secular: decomposing the recent decline in U.S. labor force participation

Author

Listed:
  • Michelle L. Barnes
  • Fabià Gumbau-Brisa
  • Giovanni P. Olivei

Abstract

Since the start of the Great Recession, one of the most striking developments in the U.S. labor market has been the pronounced decline in the labor force participation rate. The crucial issue in interpreting the decline in U.S. labor force participation is how much of the decline reflects cyclical factors and how much reflects more persistent developments such as the demographic effects of an aging population. We provide a decomposition of cyclical versus trend movements in the labor force participation rate, informed by the joint dynamics of this variable with the employment-to-population ratio. We find that since 2008 trend movements account for a significant portion of the decline in labor force participation. The cyclical response of the labor force participation rate over most of the Great Recession and ensuing recovery has been smaller than usual given the estimated cyclical behavior of the employment-to-population ratio. If the cyclical behavior of the labor force participation rate had followed historical norms, the unemployment rate over the period 2009–2011 would have been lower on average by roughly three-quarters of one percentage point. At this point, however, the unemployment rate should provide a fairly accurate signal of labor market conditions and further cyclical declines in labor force participation rates are unlikely to occur if the employment situation continues to improve.

Suggested Citation

  • Michelle L. Barnes & Fabià Gumbau-Brisa & Giovanni P. Olivei, 2013. "Cyclical versus secular: decomposing the recent decline in U.S. labor force participation," Public Policy Brief, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbpb:y:2013:n:13-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/ppb/2013/ppb132.htm
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/ppb/2013/ppb132.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Henry S. Farber & Robert G. Valletta, 2015. "Do Extended Unemployment Benefits Lengthen Unemployment Spells?: Evidence from Recent Cycles in the U.S. Labor Market," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(4), pages 873-909.
    2. Quah, Danny, 1992. "The Relative Importance of Permanent and Transitory Components: Identification and Some Theoretical Bounds," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(1), pages 107-118, January.
    3. Beveridge, Stephen & Nelson, Charles R., 1981. "A new approach to decomposition of economic time series into permanent and transitory components with particular attention to measurement of the `business cycle'," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 151-174.
    4. Daniel Aaronson & Jonathan Davis & Luojia Hu, 2012. "Explaining the decline in the U.S. labor force participation rate," Chicago Fed Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, issue Mar.
    5. Willem Van Zandweghe, 2012. "Interpreting the recent decline in labor force participation," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Q I, pages 5-34.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stephanie Aaronson & Tomaz Cajner & Bruce Fallick & Felix Galbis-Reig & Christopher Smith & William Wascher, 2014. "Labor Force Participation: Recent Developments and Future Prospects," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 45(2 (Fall)), pages 197-275.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Unemployment ; Labor market;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedbpb:y:2013:n:13-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Catherine Spozio). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/frbbous.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.