Sad_Anteater3428 t1_ja7s2r4 wrote on February 27, 2023 at 2:07 PM

Reply to comment by just-a-dreamer- in Some companies are already replacing workers with ChatGPT, despite warnings it shouldn’t be relied on for ‘anything important’ by Gold-and-Glory

This is ahistorical nonsense. The lowest labor force participation on record (since we started tracking) was 58.1% in December 1954 (source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART). Remember, far fewer women worked then. The US population in 1954 was roughly 154M people. Today it is roughly 336M (source: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/popchange-data-text.html). For added context, unemployment during the Great Depending was somewhere around 25% (source: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1948/article/pdf/labor-force-employment-and-unemployment-1929-39-estimating-methods.pdf) and much higher among people of color and women. So, yes, there are far more workers today and far lower unemployment.

Labor force participation rate has declined from its all-time high in the late 90s, but population has increased at the same time. In 2003, when the labor force participation rate was above 65%, there were roughly 138M workers in the US. In January 2023, there were over 160M workers (source: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-employment.htm), greater than the entire US population when labor force participation was at its lowest — and 22M people higher than two decades ago despite a ~3.5%-4% decline in participation rate.

Are there problems in this country? Absolutely. But we can’t fix them if we ignore basic facts.

just-a-dreamer- t1_ja7tz7p wrote on February 27, 2023 at 2:22 PM

That is because large parts of the USA were agricultural 70 years ago. It was and is a core conservative agenda to not count farm workers on payroll to work them as semi slaves.

Of course, it has racist origins concerning blacks and mexicans.

Large parts of the category of white women didn't officially work untill the 1960's, but of course they did work. Home industry was way more established few generatioms ago with sewing machines and odd jobs. Most women also did the job a daycare worker would attend to these days.

The youth did work full time starting as young as 16 not that long ago. Extended higher education has brought down their contribution. There is only so much work you can contribute while studying full time.

While the labor participation rate rose on paper, it actually went down. It only depends what you count as labor.

The black sharecroper that puts his family to work in the south didn't count as such.

Sad_Anteater3428 t1_ja7wqdt wrote on February 27, 2023 at 2:42 PM

While your basic premise of systemic undercounting of Black and Latino workers is correct, that changed during the 1980s (source: https://www.bls.gov/mlr/1999/12/art1full.pdf). Housework by (predominantly) women has never been counted. And the share of white male workers has declined since the 1950s. As the linked article states, “In contrast to the labor force participation of women, those of men decreased significantly during the 1950–98 period” (largely because of better disability insurance; disabled/seriously injured men had no choice but to work 50+ years ago) .And, again, the population has more than doubled since 1954. Even if the BLS were consistently undercounting people of color, we’d definitely notice if roughly a third of the population were still undercounted in labor force participation.

In any case, changes in how the data were collected/interpreted 40 or 70 years ago still don’t account for the fact that we have roughly 22M more workers today than twenty years ago.

Edit: Updated with partial reason for decline among white male workers