Education, employment, and labor force participation in the United States
Jamie Emerson (jdemerson@salisbury.edu)
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Jamie Emerson: Salisbury University
Economics Bulletin, 2023, vol. 43, issue 3, 1377 - 1388
Abstract:
This paper uses time series data from the United States to investigate the relationship between the employment-population ratio and labor force participation rates for various education levels: (1) Bachelor's Degree and Higher, (2) Some College or Associate Degree, (3) High School Graduates, and (4) Less Than a High School Diploma. Cointegration analysis supports a long-run relationship between these two variables, for each education level considered. Vector error correction models are estimated for the period prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. These pre-pandemic models are then used to create dynamic forecasts since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pre-pandemic models do reasonably well at forecasting the actual values of the employment-population ratios beginning in 2022 for each education level. However, labor force participation rates for those with a high school degree or less have not yet returned to levels forecasted using pre-pandemic models.
Keywords: Labor force participation; Employment-population ratio; Cointegration; Discouraged worker; Unemployment invariance hypothesis; COVID-19 pandemic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-09-30
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