The labor market is hot because the proportion of of the population working is down 8% since 2000, and a significant portion of the population have more cash and are buying more than ever. This came to a head during the pandemic when the number of workers spiked down and money rained from the sky

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART

Thanks for the explanation. There's still something (well lots) strange to me.

What are these people doing? I read COVID assistance had dried up (?), and still people are not going back into the workforce?

Isn't wage inflation supposed to help there, putting people 'back to work'? I mean, a big chunk of these 8% will be low-paid service jobs I keep hearing no one can hire for anymore ; shouldn't increasing wages (and, well, stopping the 'service-workers are slaves we can treat as dirt' mentality) help a lot here?

some people retired a year or two early and didn’t plan on re entering the work force. especially since asset prices ballooned allowing them to do so.

i think driving down asset prices and raising wages and lowered unemployment benefits will hopefully reverse some of that

This is what population stagnation looks like, wups there are no young people to fill some jobs…

Part of it is the boomers retiring, but the population pyramid is is fairly stable. [1]

The bigger issue is fewer young people are working every year. [2]

  16 to 19: -24% in the last 20 years 

  20 to 24: -11% in the last 20 years. 

  25 to 34: -3% in the last 20 years. 

Meanwhile, older people are working more than ever. This exaserbates issues of inequality. Essentially the young and poor are working less and the old and established are working more than ever. Without judgment on their reasons for working or not, it seems like rate of younger generations participating in the workforce is falling much faster than the size of the size of the younger generation is shrinking.

https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2... https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force-particip...

And now I'm really curious about why the young and the poor work less. How can they participate less ? What's the mean of subsistance here ?

For 19-24, I assume many of them are just not working and subsisting off of their parents incomes.

As for the rest, there are many ways individuals can get by. They can sustain themselves via their partner, get funds from friends and family, participate in underground workplaces, and last but not least, receive income from disability or other social services.

It is worth noting that numbers are falling about twice as fact for men as women. This could be related to the fact that two women now go to college for every one man.

anecdotally i see a lot of young people basically taking moonshots at crypto or gig work while living at home because the labor market no longer seems to provide them either stability or paths to independence.