Who's left the job market? Comparing 2007-2010 to 2010-2013

Recently Reuters ran this article : U.S. jobs market dropouts increasingly likely to stay out

And they had this nice bit of information : 

''According to economists who have analyzed Labor Department data, 6.6 million people exited the workforce from 2010 and 2013. About 61 percent of these dropouts were retirees, more than double the previous three years' share.

People dropping out because of disability accounted for 28 percent, also up significantly from 2007-2010. Of those remaining, 7 percent were heading to school, while the other 4 percent left for other reasons.

In contrast, between 2007 and 2010, retirees made up a quarter of the six million people who left the labor force, while 18 percent were classified as disabled. About 57 percent were either in school or otherwise on the sidelines.''

Lets look at that graphically :

and

Thats a pretty big shift.   

The more recent 3 years we can see that most of the people leaving are leaving for retirement.  Thats a demographic change we'd expect due to the baby boomers retiring.   Theres also a fair amount of people going into disability, and I assume many of them are baby boomers too.   Thats also a pretty expected trend.

Compared to the 07-10 period when most people left to go to school or 'other'.  Annoyingly the article doesn't break down the % of people who went to school versus other reasons and lumps them together.   But clearly that large of a drop in the labor pool for school or other is not explained by demographics and is not expected. 


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17 States Require Personal Finance Education in High School - But it Won't Solve Everything

A recent Survey of the States from the Council for Economic Education said that 17 states require personal finance education in high schools.   2 more states require that classes are offered but don't require students take them.   On top of that all 50 states require economics curriculum.    So this is good news.   But its not going to 'fix' everything.

They make kids take a lot of classes in high school but that doesn't mean they all walk out knowing the topic.   Sorry to be cynical.  

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Best of Blogs for Week of March 28th

Every Friday afternoon I share some of the more interesting or notable posts that I have seen in the personal finance blogs and other sources for the past week


DQYDJ looks at emergency funds with  Emergency Funds are Overrated: Part One of Three,
Emergency Funds are Overrated: Part Two of Three

DoughRoller has : DR 046: 4% Retirement Withdrawal Rule–An Interview with Vanguard’s Maria Bruno and Colleen Jaconetti
DR also reminds us people 50 or older can Take Advantage of the IRA Catch-Up Rule

The Big Picture shares a graphic with the Real Price of Gold Since 1791
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Household Income Percentiles for 2000 to 2012

I recently talked about a survey of Americans asking who felt they were in the middle class vs lower or upper classes.   There has been a large increase in the percent of us who think that we're in the lower class.   I wondered if incomes have plummeted for a large portion of Americans or if this was more of a perception thing.

I found detail on household incomes for each fifth at the Census. 

H1 table - Income Limits for Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent of Households

Here's what it looks like from 2000 to 2012 :

Thats not too bad looking but now lets look at it in real dollars:

That doesn't look so good.   Incomes are down from 2000 in real dollars in every fifth as well as the top 5%.

Its hard to see detail on the bottom 3 fifth groups given the scale so I'll show those groups separately: 

There you can see more clearly the drop of real incomes for the bottom 60% of people.

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