Question

In general we focus quite a bit on the unemployment rate in terms of gathering information about the economy.   What we don’t tend to focus on is the size of the labor force.  

a. Over the past 20 or so years what observations can you find online about changes in the SIZE of the labor force? Please include a link.   This should be easy to find and you might want to poke around the BLS website.

b. If we see a falling unemployment rate is it a sign of health in the economy if the labor force is declining as well?

Answer 1

soln.:

a) Over the past 20 years size of labour force inclulded citizen of age 16 years and above rises from 120,000,000 to 160,000,000

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CLF16OV

b) Falling unemployment rate is a good signal for the economic health but fall in the labour force shows less participation of citizen in the process of development, with the decreasing labour force, fall in the rate of unemployement rate doesn't mean growth in the human resource of the nation. rate of unemployment is a relative term that must be fall with respect to labour force participation with fall in the participation of labour even the unemployment rate fall but it just make an illussion for observer.