U.S Labor Force Statistics

As we can see, from 1990 to 2016 employment, unemployment as well as labor participation rate have all been affected by three economic crises over time (1990-1992, 2000-2002, 2008-2009). Apart from that the attitude of working, family structure, age span as well as gender structure of the population, social welfare policies all play important parts in these issues. In order to have a more penetrating results of analysis, we have to analyze these figures in different dimensions.

Growth in the workforce over time

PPT page 2

From 1990 to 2016 civilian employment have dramatically dropped three times due to three big historic economic crisis (1990-1992, 2000-2002, 2008-2009). But the trend of employment has been kept increasing for almost 27% from 117M to 152M people.

PPT Page 4

From this page we can see the net change of employment from 2008 to 2010 dropped and increased, except for that net change of employment has been stable. We can always predict that with the increase of economy, more employees are needed in each industry for the further expansion of their production.

Unemployment rate

PPT Page 5

Unemployment rate from year 1990 to 2016 has increased corresponding to the happening of three economic crises. After each crisis, unemployment dropped to normal level from 4% to 5%. Due to each economic crisis, along with the decrease of opening job opportunities, it’s hard for new graduates looking for vacancies, even worse workers could be laid off during that period of time. But the negative influence of economic crisis was not always equivalent to all industries, all ages and all positions. Some people could be always exposed to more risks than others since they were more sensitive to crisis, they were the battle front.

Labor participation rates

PPT Page 6

Labor participation rate in US kept flat before 2008 around 66%, after 2008 it dropped severely from 66% to 62.5%. Since labor participation rate reveals their preference between income and leisure. It can be influenced by internal factors inside of the family as well as social and political factors from external world.

PPT page 7

Compare to other developed countries such as Japan, German and UK, US is facing a relative low labor participation rate especially from 2005 to 2014, experts found it quite hard to explain.