Saturday, October 3, 2015

Federal Reserve: Lazy Americans Responsible for Economic Malaise




America’s employment participation rate is at a 40 year low.  We haven’t seen this kind of malaise since the Carter administration.  But according to the Federal Reserve, it’s not their policies, or the Obama administrations fault for this eye popping statistic; its lazy Americans who refuse to get off their asses and work.


The decrease in labor force participation among prime-age individuals has been driven mostly by the share who say they currently don't want a job. As of December 2014, prime-age labor force participation was 2.4 percentage points below its prerecession average. Of that, 0.5 percentage point is accounted for by a higher share who indicate they currently want a job; 2 percentage points can be attributed to a higher share who say they currently don't want a job.


Zero Hedge has a litany the Federal Reserve didn’t address.  Here are two of them:

Nothing about millions of aging, 55 and over, Americans refusing to retire or quit their job simply because they have no return on their savings to fall back on thank to the Fed's ZIRP, thus keeping the labor pipeline clogged and preventing younger Americans from getting promoted and achieving better paying jobs.

Nothing about a Millennial generation encumbered with $1 trillion in debt, that is so terrified of its job prospects and having to pay down its debt, it choose instead to keep rolling and piling on to this debt by remaining in college indefinitely

Nothing is the Federal Reserve’s fault.  They’re an infallible institution.  It has to be the fault of lazy Americans.  Yeah, that has to be it.

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