While the Labor Department reported 292,000 net new jobs in December, the U.S. labor-force participation rate, 62.6%, has remained at near record lows after more than five years of steady decline. It increased a bare tenth of a percent over November. Meanwhile, labor-force participation in Great Britain stayed flat through the downturn; and for 25 to 54 year olds, it increased 2.2 percentage points from 2000 to 2014. Over the same period in the U.S., the labor-force participation from ages 25 to 54 dropped 3.1 percentage points.
Running New York City’s welfare program for six years in the Bloomberg administration until 2013 taught me that employment is central to the well-being of families and the economy. The fact that so few Americans are holding or actively seeking a job is a serious problem, especially for those at the bottom.
I am not an economist, but one likely reason for the dismal labor-force participation is that many U.S. assistance programs act more like work replacements than work supports. The U.K., by contrast, has been more active in pushing recipients toward employment.
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