Tom Walker wrote: >Another factor IN >CANADA would no doubt be the substantial withdrawal of people from the >labour force over the past ten years. Most of those people would no doubt >have either been precariously employed or unemployed but instead became >simply non-employed. I haven't looked at comparative labour force >participation in the U.S. lately, but my impression was it hasn't fallen to >the same extent as in Canada. Is that right, Doug? It hasn't fallen at all. In April, the U.S. employment/population ratio was 64.2%, off slightly from its all-time high of 64.5% in January, but up from its 61.3% level at the employment trough in Feb 92, and above its earlier cyclical peak of 63.1% in Mar 90. If you adjusted for the 1.8 million people behind bars in this lovely country, though, it would knock about 0.5 percentage points off the EPR. Doug
