... in June the biggest plunge came from what is defined as “prime age” workers, or those between the ages of 25 and 54. That rate fell 0.6 percentage point to 83.3%, its lowest since December 2023.
“Looking at the statistics now, that argument doesn’t hold up so well,” North said of the retirement and immigration rationale. “I hate to use the word ‘alarming,’” he added, but said the numbers are cause for concern. ...
Alarmed? Really now. This misses the forest for a single tree.
Percent change for the labor participation rate for 25-54s is UP .1 and .2 for 1H2026 and 2H2025 respectively.
For 55s+ it's DOWN 0.8 and .2 respectively.
The 55s+ metric has had NINE semiannual declines since 2019 vs. only three for 25-54s.
The former is bleeding participation, while the latter is holding its own.
You can't really appreciate this unless you measure the employment of each group as a percentage of its own population level, from which you can determine how many of them are not working now vs. then.
The number of 55s+ working in 1H2026 and 2H2019 is nearly the same, 37.8 million and 37.6 million respectively, but the former represents only 36% of the group, while the latter represents 39.3%.
That means that the net additions to the no-longer-working side of the total population of the group since 2019 for 55s+ is now 9.193 million, but doing the same exercise for 25-54s yields a statistically insignificant 215k.
Meanwhile employment as a percentage of its own population for 25-54s, unlike for 55s+, has been and remains stronger now than at any point since the dotcom bubble, averaging 80.64% for forty-two consecutive months.
The peak year individuals of the Baby Boom, 1957, turned 62 in 2019, when employment of 55s+ naturally peaked too, while the individuals of the final year of the Baby Boom, 1964, turn 62 now in 2026.
We are witnessing the Baby Boom roll over and disappear from the labor statistics.
