Andrew, well done for moving the discussion so far off subject. I’ve not addressed underemployment as the piece isn’t about that specific point at all. It’s about the labor force to population ratio. Are changes in that driven, as some insist, by people being either pushed or discouraged out of the labor force or is it that the demographics of the population are changing and thus we have more people who are quite voluntarily and quite happily out of the labor force? The retired, for example, or stay at home Moms? Given that we do indeed have an ageing population and that the figures quoted are for the 16-to death age group the latter is at least partially true.
Perhaps, as a Labor Economist, one experienced with such figures, you’d like to give us an estimate of how much the change in the ratio is due to such factors? As I do point out, while I think that this might explain all of the change, I don’t insist that it explains all of it: only that it explains some of it. If you want to argue that point then you rather need to provide some numbers, don’t you think? To refute it?
