re: #456 William Barnett-Lewis
None of the people who are crying about unemployed people not being counted seems to notice that we are in the timeframe where lots of Baby Boomers and Generation Jonesers are retiring or going down to part-time work. If you are say 63 with a pension, and your job is on the bubble, it may, depending upon what you can get from Social Security/Pension combined, be easier to simply retire or go to half-time rather than hold on for dear life. That’s also what happened during the Great Recession: many people decided to take retirement/had to take retirement in order to have something to live on. So these people are out of the workforce entirely or only in partly. These people are now off of unemployment, so they aren’t being counted anymore.

1956 is the peak of the Baby Boom in terms of births. I was born that year. In four years (age 62), depending upon economic conditions and what’s available, many may choose to retire early. In seven years or so, the wave of retirements will drop considerably. When that happens, a lot of positions will start opening up as the smaller Generation Xers and last remaining Jonesers move up to middle or senior management and leave those positions open for younger workers.

What will real unemployment numbers look like then?