IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedfel/97727.html

Some searches may not work properly. We apologize for the inconvenience.

   My bibliography  Save this article

Why Is Prime-Age Labor Force Participation So High?

Author

Listed:
  • Deepika Baskar Prabhakar
  • Robert G. Valletta

Abstract

The labor force participation (LFP) rate for prime-age workers surged from early 2021 through early 2023, especially for women. This helped reduce the large shortfall of available workers relative to available jobs that emerged during the recovery from the pandemic. Analysis of state labor markets indicates that the cyclical response of prime-age LFP was much more pronounced during the two most recent business cycles than in prior ones. This state-level relationship weakened in 2023, however, suggesting that the cyclical gains in prime-age LFP are winding down.

Suggested Citation

  • Deepika Baskar Prabhakar & Robert G. Valletta, 2024. "Why Is Prime-Age Labor Force Participation So High?," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, vol. 2024(03), pages 1-6, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfel:97727
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/el2024-03.pdf
    File Function: Full text - article PDF
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christopher J. Erceg & Andrew T. Levin, 2014. "Labor Force Participation and Monetary Policy in the Wake of the Great Recession," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(S2), pages 3-49, October.
    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. Brandon E. Miskanic & Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau & Cindy Zhao, 2024. "To Retire or Keep Working after a Pandemic?," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, vol. 2024(08), pages 1-5, March.
    2. Angela Guo & Pawel Krolikowski, 2024. "Disability, Immigration, and Postpandemic Labor Supply," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, vol. 2024(05), pages 1-8, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Idriss Fontaine, 2021. "Uncertainty and Labour Force Participation," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(2), pages 437-471, April.
    2. Regis Barnichon & Andrew Figura, 2015. "Labor Market Heterogeneity and the Aggregate Matching Function," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 222-249, October.
    3. Sengul, Gonul & Tasci, Murat, 2020. "Unemployment flows, participation, and the natural rate of unemployment: Evidence from turkey," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    4. Lawrence Christiano & Mathias Trabandt & Karl Walentin, 2021. "Involuntary Unemployment and the Business Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 39, pages 26-54, January.
    5. Nucci, Francesco & Riggi, Marianna, 2018. "Labor force participation, wage rigidities, and inflation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 274-292.
    6. Lawrence Christiano & Mathias Trabandt & Karl Walentin, 2021. "Involuntary Unemployment and the Business Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 39, pages 26-54, January.
    7. Daniel Monte & Roberto Pinheiro, 2021. "Labor market competition over the business cycle," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(4), pages 1593-1615, October.
    8. Shannon Bold & Laurence Harris, 2018. "Identifying monetary policy rules in South Africa with inflation expectations and unemployment," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2018-43, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    9. Iwasaki, Yuto & Muto, Ichiro & Shintani, Mototsugu, 2021. "Missing wage inflation? Estimating the natural rate of unemployment in a nonlinear DSGE model," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    10. Liying Luo & James Hodges, 2019. "The Age-Period-Cohort-Interaction Model for Describing and Investigating Inter-Cohort Deviations and Intra-Cohort Life-Course Dynamics," Papers 1906.08357, arXiv.org.
    11. Oscar Jorda & Alan Taylor & Sanjay Singh, 2019. "The Long-Run Effects of Monetary Policy," 2019 Meeting Papers 1307, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    12. Antonio M. Conti & Concetta Gigante, 2018. "Weakness in Italy�s core inflation and the Phillips curve: the role of labour and financial indicators," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 466, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    13. Levin, Andrew T., 2014. "The design and communication of systematic monetary policy strategies," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 52-69.
    14. Marianne Bitler & Hilary Hoynes, 2016. "The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same? The Safety Net and Poverty in the Great Recession," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(S1), pages 403-444.
    15. David Blanchflower & Alex Bryson & Jackson Spurling, 2024. "The wage curve after the Great Recession," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 91(362), pages 653-668, April.
    16. Carlstrom, Charles T. & Fuerst, Timothy S. & Paustian, Matthias, 2015. "Inflation and output in New Keynesian models with a transient interest rate peg," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 230-243.
    17. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Dmitri Koustas, 2013. "Amerisclerosis? The Puzzle of Rising U.S. Unemployment Persistence," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 44(2 (Fall)), pages 193-260.
    18. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin S. Eichenbaum & Mathias Trabandt, 2015. "Understanding the Great Recession," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 110-167, January.
    19. Garga, Vaishali & Singh, Sanjay R., 2021. "Output hysteresis and optimal monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 871-886.

    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:fedfel:97727. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbsfus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.