This guy can't imagine that "civilization" was just fine in 1956, when there were only 2.8 billion people in the world instead of 8 billion

 Kevin Dolan: If Birth Rates Continue To Plummet, Civilization Will End

 

 Birth rates inevitably decline for the economic reasons with which Mr. Dolan says he's primarily concerned. But he himself doesn't seem to reckon with the fact that the spread of prosperity has produced population growth to the point of its current natural limit. Years ago already it was predicted that global population would peak around 9 billion before falling. It falls because that's what prosperity does. Prosperity dulls the natural response to want, which is reproduction.

 

Meanwhile Mao killed his millions by the tens from 1949 and America killed its millions by the tens from 1973 and few have been the wiser.

Oddly, we still call this civilization.

 

Be that as it may, failure to reproduce eventually will necessitate a gradual and huge redistribution of wealth from the older population to the younger population, involving sometimes quite dramatic repricing of goods and services in the process because of the law of supply and demand.

 

And then at some point the natural response to reproduce will reassert itself "after the money's gone".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once in a lifetime.

 

The so-called tight labor market is a euphemism for age discrimination by employers

Employers can't find enough young, cheap labor because of declining birth rates, reducing the available pool (blue line year over year growth in decline on an average basis since the mid-1980s, lower than 1% for 20 years).

There's still plenty of older, more expensive labor out there, but employers keep getting rid of them and won't rehire them (red line year over year growth steady between 2-3% for 20 years).

Noah Millman at The American Conservative discovers the inverse of "Employment Population Ratio: 25 - 54 years"

Here, excitedly writing about the inverse of this chart which has been around for a long time:

The problem with measuring employment with this chart, or unemployment with its inverse as Millman advocates, is that this cohort (25 to 54 years of age) has been shrinking due to declining birth rates. The meaning it conveys has changed over time for this and other reasons.

Rising birth rates of the Baby Boom until 1964 help explain the dramatic upward movement in the chart thereafter in the first place, along with the entry of Baby Boom women into the workforce at the same time, a second most important variable.

Additionally, at the peak of the Baby Boom in 1957, the birth rate was 25.3. Twenty years later in 1977 it was only 15.1 and has remained thereabouts and even lower ever since.

The lower birth rates have been winding their way through the employment statistics while female employment was peaking at the same time, like the inverse of a goat going through the belly of a snake but undetectable because of the female phenomenon. The peak in the employment population ratio of this cohort notably coincides with the 1957 peak of the Baby Boom hitting 20 years in the workforce in January 1999, shown above. They hit 30 years in the workforce in 2009, right in the middle of the Great Recession.

Ask how many 52 year olds lost their jobs that year (29.5 million of all ages lost their jobs in 2009), and then passed out of the range of this chart within two years, only to be replaced by . . . not enough people born after 1964.

Interestingly, employment for women in this cohort, while still not fully recovered, is off only 600,000 from the 2007 peak, but for men is off 1.8 million, both on an average basis through 2016. That's a deficit of 2.4 million, but based on declining birth rates I'd estimate most of them won't ever materialize in the future . . . because they never existed.

During the Baby Boom between 1946 and 1964, births per year averaged 4.0 million. But between 1965 and 1992, today's 25 to 52 year olds, births per year averaged just 3.6 million per year.

That's 11.6 million fewer people to take up today's slack.

This is probably as good as it gets.

Trump is right that wages are too high: The minimum wage should be reduced to $4.20 per hour, not raised, to put teenagers back to work

Trump was right when he said during the debates that wages are too high. He was referring to our comparative disadvantage as a nation with lower wages abroad.

A key reason wages are "too high" in the US is because the minimum wage sets the floor for wages too high to begin with. That's why Trump said he didn't want to see a minimum wage increase. But we could actually start to reverse this problem by reducing the minimum wage to $4.20 per hour, not raising it.

Currently the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, almost 73% higher than it should be.

The minimum wage set by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set the minimum wage at $0.25 per hour. Indexed to the Consumer Price Index since then, the current level should be about $4.20 per hour, through 2014.

One terrible consequence of artificially high wages at the bottom of the scale is that average teenage employment in the United States has plummeted from its high in 1978 and 1979 at 8.1 million to 4.7 million in 2015.

As recently as 2006 teenage employment averaged 6.2 million, but now on average 1.5 million fewer teenagers work compared to 2006 after a fusillade of minimum wage increases were unleashed beginning in 2007 under George W. Bush.

Demographics are not to be faulted. Birth rates have held steady between 1977 and 1999 at 15.525 per 1000, so that people born between those years turned 16 between 1993 and 2015, providing a steady supply and a steady level of young labor.

So compared to peak teenage employment, 3.4 million fewer teenagers work today even as the federal minimum wage was hiked ELEVEN times:

From $2.30 in 1976

to $2.65 in 1978,

to $2.90 in 1979,

to $3.10 in 1980, 

to $3.35 in 1981,

to $3.80 in 1990,

to $4.25 in 1991,

to $4.75 in 1996,

to $5.15 in 1997,

to $5.85 in 2007,

to $6.55 in 2008,

to $7.25 in 2009.

That's a 215% increase in the minimum wage since peak teenage employment, accompanied by a 42% decline in that employment. You get the picture. Increase the cost of labor, and you get less of it.

Teenage employment is critical to transmitting our values to the next generation of Americans by giving the young an opportunity to gain the work experience and habits they will need to get that first "real" job, and to learn the relationship between effort and enjoying the fruits of labor.

Unfortunately their teachers and parents have not been communicating this message in word nor in deed. The socialism of Bernie Sanders is all the rage at the schools even as the parents idly answer the siren song of minimum wage increases sung by Republicans and Democrats alike.

The only problem with all that is, eventually the kids will run out of the fruits of other people's labor, including their parents'.

    

Birth rate in 2013 reaches new all time low under Obama

The birth rate per 1000 women in 2006 and 2007 had been 14.3, but in 2011 it fell to 12.7 and then to 12.6 in 2012.

Things have gotten even worse in 2013: the birth rate per 1000 women is now barely 12.4, a new record low.

In the late 1950s the birth rate per 1000 women exceeded 25.0, and fell through the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, stabilizing in the range of 15 for many years thereafter.

View the recent CDC reports here and here.

No babies, no GDP.

The median existing home is affordable if you make $77,577

The median existing home in April is affordable if you make at least $77,577.

Unfortunately, only about 13% of individual wage earners make that much, which means two incomes are generally required to buy it and keep it. Long gone are the days when one income can support a wife raising children in the home.

The price for the median existing home has climbed to $201,700 in April, and the homeownership rate as of the beginning of the year has fallen to a level first achieved in the early 1970s.

At $154,600 in January 2012, the lowest median existing home price since the late housing bubble, the then median existing home was affordable if you made at least $59,461, which was the case for 20% of individual wage earners at the time. The homeownership rate then was 65.4.

So in just two short years the percentage of wage earners for whom housing is affordable has contracted by a whopping 35% as prices have rebounded in excess of 30% under the influence of Federal Reserve interest rate policy.

The birth rate in 2012 at 12.6 per 1000 women is half what it was in 1955 and the lowest yet in the post-war.

The birth rate has fallen almost 12% under Obama to the lowest level in the post-war

The birth rate per 1000 women both in 2006 and 2007, according to the latest CDC figures, was 14.3, but in 2012 it had fallen to 12. 6 from 12.7 in 2011.

The falloff means that annually you get something like 364,000 fewer new Americans to take our place.

In the late 1950s peak birth rates were in excess of 25.0 per 1000 women.

So if we were doing our job reproducing ourselves today like we were in the 1950s, we'd have something like 7.9 million newborn Americans in 2012 instead of 3.95 million.

Birth rates fell into the 15-range in the 1970s and have stayed there pretty much ever since, until now.

Now you know why GDP is also half what it used to be.

We are literally committing suicide.

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.

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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."

Our brilliant masters raised the cost of youth labor by 41% in the teeth of the financial crisis, decimating their employment by 43%

The current deficit in the general employment level is about 1.55 million below the July 2007 peak (all figures are not-seasonally-adjusted as published by stlouisfed.org). Since the measurement typically is at its highest in the summers, it looks likely that after seven years we are finally going to dig out of this hole this coming summer. Swings up 2 to 4 million from the winter lows to the summer highs are not unusual for this measurement.

That said, deficits in the levels for some age groups remain, and reveal how far behind the employment level remains even as population has increased over the period by an additional 16 million.

The question is why.

Most importantly, workers in the core of the working age population 25-54 years old are today 5.7 million fewer in number than they were at their November 2007 peak, which is the largest deficit by age group.

The oldest of these workers today were born in 1960 when births per 1000 women were still 23.7. The youngest were born in 1989 when births per 1000 women had plummeted to 16.4. But it wasn't until 1965 that births fell below 20 per 1000. That means there are only five tranches left in the measurement today from the high birth rate years 1960-1964 inclusive, whereas seven years ago the picture was a little different. We had seven more high birth rate years represented than we do today. Those aged 54 seven years ago were born in 1953 when births per 1000 were pushing 25. Births per year from 1955 through 1964 reached as high as 4.27 million in 1961. Contrast that with 1973 through 1976 when births crashed to 3.1 million per year, a deficit of 4 million over just those four years compared to the pre-1965 levels.

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.

If there is an economic problem revealed by the employment level, it has to do with the youngest workers.

Consider teenagers 16-19: 3.2 million fewer teenagers are working today in that age range than at their pre-recession peak in July 2006 at 7.5 million. That's a 43% decline in teenage employment levels in almost 8 years, an utter catastrophe which has nothing to do with demographics. Birth rates have held steady between 1987 and 1998 at 15.4 per 1000.

Unfortunately, teenagers paid the biggest price because in the teeth of the first economic depression in the post-war this country decided it would be a good idea to raise the minimum wage in 2007, again in 2008, and again in 2009. When wages came under severe pressure for every other age group and millions took pay cuts just to keep working, our brilliant masters decided to raise the cost of youth labor by 41% since 2006. And then the dopes voted for a guy who wants to raise the cost of their labor another 39%.

  

College age workers 20-24 by contrast, are in deficit from July 2007 by only 0.8 million.

The declines for the three age groups of 9.7 million minus the gain of 6.9 million for those 55 and older implies a net loss of 2.8 million in the employment level, impacting workers primarily 16-19.

If you want less of something, tax it. And that's what the minimum wage is, a tax on labor which reduces the quantity of it naturally.

Why Should Government Support Home Ownership? Babies Need Nests!

America should support home ownership because babies need nests. Babies are future taxpayers. Babies are the future.

Is it any coincidence that in the wake of the housing debacle and the employment depression birth rates have now tanked to record lows?

No nests, no jobs, no babies.

Time has the story here:

[I]n 2011 . . . the general fertility rate (63.2 per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44) was the lowest ever recorded; the birth rate for teenagers ages 15 to 19 declined; birth rates for women ages 20 to 24 hit a record low; and rates for Hispanic and non-Hispanic black women dipped. Some birth rates remained unchanged, like those of women in their late 40s. Only women ages 35 to 39 and 40 to 44 are more likely to have babies now than in the past.

The Economic and Social Value of the Joint Income Tax Return Produced the Baby Boom

So says Phyliss Schlafly, who thinks Texas Gov. Rick Perry's flat tax plan flattens the traditional family and rewards kinky couples, here:

The joint income tax return for husbands and wives was landmark legislation. The Republican Congress passed it in 1948 over President Truman's veto.

As originally designed, the joint return recognized a husband and wife as two equal partners, even if the husband earned all the family's income. Each tax bracket, deduction and exemption was equal to twice that of a single person.

Subsequent tax reform bills, especially the one signed by Richard Nixon in 1969, which also introduced the hated Alternative Minimum Tax, reduced the value of a joint return to only about 1.6 persons, while increasing the tax benefit of an unmarried "head of household" to about 1.4 persons. Simple arithmetic shows that a single parent with an unmarried live-in "partner" gets more favorable tax treatment than respectable married couples struggling to support their own children.

And by the way, the postwar "baby boom" happened during the 20-year period when married couples were fairly valued in the federal income tax. That's not coincidence; incentives matter, and America's marriage rate and birth rate plummeted after the value of the joint return was reduced.