80.9% of people 25-54 years old worked any job in Sep 2026

This population is working close to its past potential. 

There were 25.89 million prime working age people 25-54 years of age in America just like Abdul who didn't work in August 2026, but Abdul says we have a cult of work

 We have 11.76 million teenagers 16-19 years old, 7.45 million college kids 20-24 years old, 25.89 million core adults 25-54 years old, and 67.63 million people 55 or older, all of whom did not work in August 2026.

That's over 112 million eating but not working.

They can't all work, obviously, but if each group lived up to its own past peak performance, 13.27 million more across all groups could in fact be working who are not working.

That 13.27 million more working is just 11.8% more.

GDP sucks in part because we aren't working up to our past potential.

As I incessantly point out, the key to a happy life is a full time job, because it allows you to arbitrage it for a car, a home, a spouse, and children.

Peak full time in America was in July 2000 when 54.67% had a full time job. In August 2026 just 49.14% did. The difference between those two points at current population is an extra 15.2 million full time jobs which we don't presently have.

America is a much bigger place now than in July 2000, too, by 63 million in civilian non-institutional population. Shouldn't that also make us stronger? 

Do we really think an extra 15 million out of 112 million is dreaming the impossible dream?  

We need leaders who don't think so.

But this guy . . . 

 

 

Who's not working in August 2026?

Over 112 million, that's who: 

67.2% of teenagers 16-19 years old: 11.8 million

33.7% of the college-aged 20-24 years old: 7.5 million

19.9% of prime working age adults 25-54 years old: 25.9 million

64.1% of the population 55 years old or older: 67.6 million.

Every age group in America has lost its work ethic to one degree or another, for one reason or another

The percentage of each age group's population which works is in structural decline:

Teens since 1978 (get a haircut and get a real job); 

College kids since 1989 (because they went to college more and more after that, duh);

Core adults 25-54 since the late 1990s (they keep getting knocked down but they mostly keep getting back up again 👍 -- this is a huge tranche with some people carrying the load more than others, and you know who you are);

Americans 55 and over since 2019 (the Great Recession didn't kill 'em, from which they made more than a nice recovery, but they are not going to recover from the pandemic era for decades to come because Peak Baby Boom turned 62 that year).

  

 

It's not job seekers giving up, it's Baby Boomers exiting the stage

 Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation rate falls to lowest in 50 years, outside of Covid era

... 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. 

The foreign born population works at a rate of 63.26% in June 2026, the native born at only 58.25%

Foreign born workers numbered 30.725 million, native born 131.997 million.

To get native born employment to 63.26% of their own population in June 2026 would require an extra 11.351 million native born suddenly to get jobs.

The best estimates of current illegal alien presence in the United States range between 11 million and 13.7 million.

The percentage of the native born population working continues to fall because it is aging. The share of the 55s and over who work continues to fall, now down to 35.77% of their cohort. 

There are just 26 million people aged 25-54 in the United States who are currently not working. That's where they'd have to come from, a tall order.

 

Trump insists to Laura Ingraham that we don't have enough workers even though over 3 million more prime age workers aged 25-54 aren't even in the labor force 20 years on from 1999

Average number "Not in labor force" aged 25-54

1999: 18.785 million

2019: 22.102 million

--------------------------

+3.317 million after 20 years, despite recent declines

The last 20 years have been a disaster for American workers with Bush and Obama outsourcing good middle class jobs to cheaper labor markets around the world, especially China.

Trump was supposed to fix this, and now he's parroting the arguments of the people he ran against.

It's pitiful and awful. 

Watch Ingraham grill Trump here. Unfortunately Laura's command of the data is merely derivative and shallow, which leaves her simply to argue against Trump that he didn't campaign on bringing in foreign labor, which is an excellent political point by itself, but she didn't own the president on this one the way she could have with the facts. She's smart enough to understand that lack of wage pressure refutes the idea of a labor shortage, but didn't dig deeper to find the surplus labor.

Under Trump the big jobs growth has been for 55s and over

Importing cheap labor immigrants only hurts young Americans who need work experience. Older Americans are actually working longer to support their kids who can't get adequate employment.

This is insane.

Employment levels since Trump election in November 2016 through December 2019, seasonally adjusted:

55+:    +8.9%

25-54: +3.4%

20-24: +0.4%

18-19:  -0.2%

Actual increases in levels: 

55+:    +3,086,000

25-54: +3,335,000

20-24:      +55,000

18-19:         -7,000 

Fake jobs boom: Core working age employment in 2019 finally and just barely overcame the average level from 2007

Up just 0.53% after 12 years. 

There is no jobs boom but you'd never know it from the headlines

Are all these stories written by twenty-somethings? They are an offense to anyone with a knowledge of history:

"US adds robust 224,000 jobs in June" -- ABC

"Strong hiring in June: 224,000 new jobs, 3.7% unemployment" -- CBS

"Big month for jobs, big headache for Fed Chair Powell" -- NBC

"U.S. adds 224,000 jobs as hiring rebounds in June, calming worries about the economy" -- MarketWatch

"US labour market booms in June" -- BBC

"The US labor market rebounds in June, adding far more jobs than expected" -- Business Insider

"Jobs report smashes expectations" -- AOL 

"Labor market comes roaring back as jobs see 'nice pop', economists say" -- MarketWatch

Meanwhile, the facts.

Trump has yet to put numbers on the board which distinguish payrolls as robust, strong, big, calming, booming, rebounding, smashing or roaring.

For roaring you have to look back to Reagan and Clinton. Trump is not in their league. So far he's not even as good as Obama for putting up big months (granted, over eight years), and is merely one term president Bush 41-league, the best comparison for comparable time in office. It ain't over 'til it's over, but 30 months in Trump has just two big months to his name, that's it, and the clock is ticking on the longest, but nowhere near best, economic expansion in history.

On a net population-adjusted basis there are as of 2018 5.2 million more Americans 16 to 64 years of age not in the labor force who used to be in it since low levels reached for respective age groups in 1989, 1995 and 1997, including one million fewer not in labor force age 25-54 since 1989. There are 2.8 million more 16-24 not in labor force in 2018 than in 1995 on a population adjusted basis, and 3.4 million more age 55-64 since 1997.

5.2 million people actually sitting on the sidelines added to payrolls in a real jobs boom would boost current monthly levels by 108,333 on an average basis over 4 years, in other words, well above 300,000 monthly.

Trump gave 2.3 million foreigners US jobs in fiscal 2017 and 1.8 million in 2018 while 22.7 million able-bodied Americans 25-54 weren't even in the labor force in 2018

2018 USCIS Statistical Annual Report

Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey

Rush Limbaugh doesn't know what he's talking about when he says there are more job openings than workers

Total nonfarm job openings: 7,581,000

A: Unemployment level: 6,235,000

B: Not in labor force want a job now: 5,222,000

C: Not in labor force age 25-54: 22,015,000

A is the official unemployment level. To be counted in it you have to be counted in the labor force.

B is the number of people in addition to the unemployed who are unemployed but aren't counted as such because they are not in the labor force. These are the people unemployed longer than one year who say they still want a job when they are surveyed.

C is all the people of prime working age who aren't in the labor force and aren't counted as unemployed. Some of B are included in this number. This group averaged 21.3 million in both 2006 and 2007, before the shit hit the fan, and got as high as almost 24 million in 2015. It averaged 22.7 million last year. The data goes back only to 1982 but shows that in the 1980s and some of the 1990s that this group shrank during jobs recoveries just as it is shrinking now. There is lots of potential labor here sitting on the sidelines.

In any event, A + B means at least 11.5 million jobless with 7.6 million openings.

Advantage: employers.

P. S. I have seen the very same jobs with the very same companies advertized for years on end. How do they never get filled, hm?

Noah Smith embraces the Trump narrative: "There’s no doubt that the U.S. economy is in a boom"

Here for Bloomberg.

After examining several indicators, which, however, are not unequivocal for their interpretation despite saying "no doubt", Noah Smith comes down on the side of improved sentiment as the cause of the current "boom".

On that we agree. There's a boom in sentiment.

The problem is, too many people are importing that improved sentiment into their reading of the data, and into their choice of the data.

For example, Smith focuses on job openings to unemployed, which is a tiny measure (6.66 million in June) of what's really going on in the labor market. But the broadest measures of unemployment still show 15.9 million unemployed, underemployed, and no longer counted in the labor force. There is still huge slack in the labor market, which is one reason why wages for the vast majority of workers are not rising like they would in a real economic boom (2.7% y/y in July vs. in the 4s in 2006/7).

Similarly Smith discusses the percent of population employed aged 25-54, but clearly misses that it's most definitely not "back to 2006 levels" as he claims (H1 2018 is at 79.2%, still below the 2006 average of 79.8% and also below the average of either half of 2006). The broadest measure of the percent employed, on the other hand, still shows a huge gap between now and the pre-Great Recession average when over 6 million more were employed than are at present (60.5% now vs. 62.9% then, on average).

The case is similar with domestic investment.

Smith chooses to highlight "Shares of gross domestic product: Gross private domestic investment: Fixed investment: Nonresidential (A008RE1Q156NBEA)" to show that "investment as a percentage of the economy is at about the level of the mid-2000s boom". But the current level in H1 2018 at 13.7% is also identical to H2 2014. Was that indicative of a boom? Did we blink and miss it? How about in H1 2008 when it was again at 13.7%? Was that indicative of a boom? If so, why did the economy then promptly crash in H2 2008?

A broader measure of domestic investment, however, "Shares of gross domestic product: Gross private domestic investment (A006RE1Q156NBEA)", shows us well off the 2006 peak and even the more recent 2015 level. Whatever we call what we have right now, the current 17.7% is still far below the 19.8% level of H1 2006, which itself failed to equal the boom level of the year 2000 (19.9%).

With all that cash unleashed by the tax reforms and sloshing around in the economy, one would think things would look a lot better than this, which simply shows that most of that money indeed went elsewhere.

GDP has been temporarily goosed by the tax reforms in concert with a fresh gusher of federal deficit spending. But those are one-offs. They will not, and cannot, be repeated over and over again in short succession.

We know what comes next.

Arbeit macht GDP: At root America's basic economic problems lie at every level in not working enough

There is no age tranche working up to its potential, especially not teenagers, but also not the college-aged, not the core 25 to 54 years, and now not even the over 55 crowd. The latter in fact has only been held up more or less by those over 65 ramping up their participation in the wake of The Great Recession.

It all starts with the phenomenon of "failure to launch" in the teenage years. Baby Boomers didn't simply have fewer children and work less. They had fewer children who also lacked a vigorous work ethic. And that now appears institutionalized in the children of the children as well. This has now rippled through the system, as can be seen in the increasingly later dates for peak average annual participation in the age tranche charts below (1979, 1987, 1997, 2012, and 2016-2017?). GDP will not improve without a cultural reestimation of work. And a return to work will not occur without a need to return, which can only mean one thing:

“from rice paddy to rice paddy in three generations.”

16 to 19

20 to 24

25 to 54

55 and over

65 and over (subset)

Academic Ann Douglas' analysis is a cloister-f*^k: "Even some white men feel they've been left behind"

Here, where her attachment to the ideology of "sexism" blinds her to the real consequences of Obama's intentional inattention to the fate of the white middle class of both sexes, no sex, homosex, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera:

Yes, Hillary was a flawed candidate. Her penchant for privacy—not surprising given what the Republicans and the national press have put her through since 1992—was her Achilles heel, leading to the use of a private email server that came to symbolize her alleged untrustworthiness. It also led her to be not adroit enough with the media. Hillary misread the country: the fury about the wages of neoliberalism—which, yes, she embodied—that was gripping people, young and old, on the Right and the Left. Thus, she didn’t have a galvanizing progressive message that, as the Sanders campaign demonstrated, millions were hungering for, even some white men feeling they’ve been left behind.

Even some white men? 

How about 4 million whites of both sexes, Ann, in the core of the working population aged 25 to 54 years, who've been left behind in fact and don't just "feel" they have:

Stupid things heard on the Steve Gruber Show radio program last week

Both the AM drive-time host, Steve Gruber, a libertarian for whom every opponent is taken as a challenge to his manhood, and his weekly punching bag guest, Liberal Lee, last Tuesday agreed that the middle class in America is basically . . .  intact!

Which just proves that ideologues are impervious to the destruction which has been all around them and that libertarians and liberals drink from the same cup. Both camps are too heavily invested in the political gangs they support to say otherwise, for if the one did it would mean George Bush and Alan Greenspan would have to be blamed, and if the other, Barack Obama, Larry Summers and the rest of the Clinton re-treads which steered the economy through the latest depression to give you . . . nearly $90 billion in costs for over 500 failed banks, over 5 million homes lost to foreclosure, full-time jobs still 4 million below the 2007 peak seven years ago, ObamaCare's lies, higher costs, poorer coverage and limited networks, the deaths of Americans at Benghazi, IRS targeting of conservatives, the most imperial presidency in our history, 30 million prime working age people not working, a lawless executive, and 1.8% GDP, the worst in the post-war.

For his part, Gruber basically gave over a segment on his show every week this fall to the reelection campaign of Congressman Tim Walberg, a conventional Republican who normally votes with the majority of his caucus, but who did vote against making the Bush tax cuts permanent for the vast majority of Americans. Walberg notably just rewarded his radio benefactor who opposed Cromnibus with a vote for it, in keeping with his past voting record for sweeping spending bills which avoid the traditional appropriations process in order to take the politics out of spending the people's money. Hey, thanks Gruber.

The Steve Gruber Show is unfortunately heard on many small market radio stations during morning drive throughout Michigan, which through August 2014 was the top state for completed foreclosures among non-judicial states for the prior twelve month period. But the show's best rank is only #3 in the Lansing market according to dar.fm, and #31 in the mornings overall, here. The best thing that can be said for it is that the stations it is on are typically low-power, like its commentary. 

Obama's war on growth: Per capita measure shows GDP didn't recover to 2007 level until 3Q2013

So says Ironman, here:

"Going by this measure we see that it wasn't until the third quarter of 2013 that the U.S. economy really recovered to its pre-recession level. And then, it has only been since the second quarter of 2014 that it has grown beyond that level.

"The interesting thing is that tracking the GDP per capita measure this way would more closely match the perceptions of the American people regarding the overall health of the U.S. economy. Say as measured by the University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index, which returned to its prerecession levels just a few months ahead of real GDP per capita.

"Contrary to what at least one particular economist [Jonathan Gruber] and his fellow travelers [Bill Maher/Kathleen Sebelius] might think about their cognitive abilities and financial literacy, regular Americans would seem to be pretty capable of collectively assessing the real condition of the U.S. economy."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, self-perceptions matter.

Coincident with the extraordinarily long 6 year wait for the real economy to recover, the self-identification of the American people by lower class in January 2014 has swelled by 50 million since 2008, according to the results of a regular Pew survey, showing just how many people have died on the vine of a militant, leftist Obama administration and Democrat Party bent on destroying the middle class.

When the New York Times suddenly tells you after the election that 30 million prime-working-age Americans 25-54 aren't working, you know that where there's smoke, there's fire. With fewer than 5 million job openings in the country for those 30 million, legalizing 11 million illegal aliens isn't just an act of charity toward some, but a declaration of war against all.

Barack Obama has been burning down the house, one family at a time.

30 million prime working age Americans 25-54 do not work, and 10 million are men, competing for fewer than 5 million openings

The New York Times reports here:

"As the economy slowly recovers from the Great Recession, many of those men and women are eager to find work and willing to make large sacrifices to do so. Many others, however, are choosing not to work, according to a New York Times/CBS News/Kaiser Family Foundation poll that provides a detailed look at the lives of the 30 million Americans 25 to 54 who are without jobs. ... [S]ome men might choose to describe themselves as unwilling to take low-wage jobs when in fact they cannot find any jobs. There are about 10 million prime-age men who are not working, but there are only 4.8 million job openings for men and women of all ages, according to the most recent federal data."

Bloomberg puts 6 million aged 25-54 still missing in employment action

Here:

So far, the faster pace of job creation hasn't coaxed enough people back into the labor force. As of October, the seasonally unadjusted participation rate for people age 25 to 54 stood at 81.1 percent, up 0.3 percentage point from a year earlier but about 6 million people below the 10-year pre-recession average of 83.5 percent.

Junk thought from Mish on labor force, employment and population

Here:

Since April 2008, the population in age group 25-54 declined 0.8%, but the labor force declined 3.6%, and employment declined 4.6%. ...

In the core age 25-54 age group, the population is down 1,053,000 but employment is down a whopping 4,614,000.

Thus, in the 25-54 age group, roughly 3,561,000 people are not working who should be working. The figure is higher if you include other age groups.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Mish is looking at the issue from a zero-sum perspective which forgets that the age groups have changed in composition over time. Of course employment levels are down. The question is where did it all go, and why did it go there.

The 25-54 age group was full of Baby Boomers in 2008 who in 2014 are now in the 55+ category where the employment level has continued to grow and grow despite the recession. What has happened is that the Baby Boomers in the 25-54 age group have been replaced by subsequent demographic tranches bringing up the rear which were much less numerous because birth rates to Baby Boomers dropped dramatically compared to their parents' era. As a consequence no age group will ever reproduce labor force sizes which match what they were as the Baby Boomers grew up. In fact, the size of the 25-54 group will continue to decline for five more years until all the Baby Boomers cross over to the 55+ group.

The supposed four million+ deficit in employment in the 25-54 age group today can be explained entirely by demographics.

I presented the data here, concluding:

"It appears therefore that the fall-off in the employment level of those 25-54 can be explained entirely by the aging of their cohort in which many millions over the last seven years have moved on to the next level, and by the failure of the younger members of this group to bring up the rear in terms of their aggregate numbers because there just weren't enough of them born. The reason for the decline of their employment level is therefore structural, not economic, and will continue to be so for the next five years.

"Indeed, workers aged 55 and older have escaped a decline in their employment level. There are in fact 6.9 million more working at this age right now in 2014 than there were exactly seven years ago, which is what one would expect from the data. The Baby Boom is simply aging and continuing to work as it did before, and it has a lot of room left to run."