Age structure and the UK unemployment rate

Richard Barwell

Bank of England working papers from Bank of England

Abstract: The proportion of youths in the labour force has fallen dramatically over the past 15 years, following the collapse in the fertility rate in the 1970s ('the baby bust'). Given that youths always have higher unemployment rates than adults, this shift in the composition of the labour force towards those with lower unemployment rates may have been responsible for a fall in the aggregate unemployment rate. Using data from the Labour Force Survey, it is estimated that about 55 basis points of the 565 basis point fall in the UK unemployment rate between 1984 and 1998 can be accounted for by changes in the age structure of the labour force. Changes in the fraction of each age group that is economically active will also affect the composition of the labour force (and therefore potentially the unemployment rate); however, even controlling for changing labour force participation rates by age, demographically driven shifts in the age composition of the labour force still explain about 40 basis points of the fall in the unemployment rate. Finally, it is estimated that demographic change will have a negligible impact on the unemployment rate over the next decade, on the basis of recent labour force projections.

Date: 2000-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/archive/Documents/h ... apers/2001/wp124.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/archive/Documents/historicpubs/workingpapers/2001/wp124.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/archive/Documents/historicpubs/workingpapers/2001/wp124.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:boe:boeewp:124

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Bank of England working papers from Bank of England Bank of England, Threadneedle Street, London, EC2R 8AH. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Digital Media Team ().