I don's see how this contradicts the parent's comment? He's presumably talking about the unemployment subsidy that the federal government offered.

Both the parent comment and the OP article talk about the federal subsidy, which both imply drive low labor participation rates. You can read the same argument from years back out of the Brookings Institute, just substitute COVID subsidies with Opioids [1] as the cause of depressed labor participation.

My counter: The labor-force participation is still at historic highs compared to the 1950s through the early 70s, but not as high as its peak in 2000 [2]. Combined with relatively normal unemployment historically [3] the market for labor is squeezed. After 40 years of neoliberal policy dismantling state programs they've released as much marginal labor as possible, and we are all now seeing a return to historic norms.

[1]: https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/where-have-all-the-w...

[2]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=KfNL

[3]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE

But the 1950s had very few working women. One would imagine that, having added women to the numerator, a 60% now means society has changed a lot from a 60% then.

That is, the two 60%s tell different stories. Of course, the right way for me to see this is if housewifery rate has returned to the baseline, or if female labor participation rate is similar to what it was, or if households can be supported and are supported in the same way as the past.

My impression was that the rapid growth in labor force participation was because of women. But I have not recently tested if that is correct. M

The distribution did change [1; red, blue]; more women were entering than men leaving. Since 2000 both demographics are dropping about equally and in lock step, but not returning to previous decade distributions.

[1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=KfNz