At 03:38 PM 3/13/2004 -0600 Dan Minette wrote:
>Right here is where I depart. The labor pool of possible employees
>increased by 49% from '57 to '80, but by only 32% from '80 to '03. (The
>participation in the work force increased 60% and 37%, respectively.
I wonder what the underlying dynamics of this trend are.
First, I am always skeptical of arbitrary time series comparisons. Have
you tried adjusting your boundaries by a few years and seeing if the trend
holds? Off the top of my head I know that 1980 was a relative peak for
the economy ahead of a recession, and 2003 of course is in some was below
the peaks of a few years earlier. I don't recall the economic situation
in 1957 off the top of my head.
Secondly, these numbers seem a little bit odd. During the first period,
US population increased by 132%. In the second period, population growth
slowed, but only slightly to 128% Moreover, legal immigration in the
first time period, as a 10-year rolling aggregate, steadily increased from
1.3% of the population to 1.9% of the population. (i.e. the sum of legal
immigrants in the previous 10 years was 1.9% of the 1980 population.)
By 1990, that figure was 3%, peaking at 3.75% in the mid-1990's, and
levelling off to 3% in the current period. I only have data for illegal
immigration beginning in 1990, which boosts the present day figure to 4.8%.
On the basis of these numbers, I find your above numers to be slightly
incongruous. My first-order interpretation would be that the US economy
experienced a growth in production during he 60's and 70's fuelled by
increasing the female labor force participation rate. These gains were
then largely exhausted by 1980.
>We have, for fraction changes from '60 to '80 and for '80 to
>'00:
>
> < high school high school college
>'60-'80 -24% 121% 216%
>'80-'00 -35% 45% 93%
I'm not sure that I follow what you mean by a "fraction change."
JDG
_______________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
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