Saturday, February 11, 2012

More on labour participation rates

I recently listened to a guest on Bloomberg Surveillance with Tom Keene and Ken Prewitt discussing how the drop in U.S. participation is nothing to be alarmed about because it is a function of baby boomer demographics.  Since the market is getting tougher and they are thinking about retirement anyway, they may have less attachment to the labour force. I looked at the Canadian data to see if this idea holds here.  The answer is no.  While overall participation rates have been dropping since the great recession, they have been on a steady up-trend for ages 55 and over.  Ten year chart below:

 

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