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Prime-Age Participation
About This Indicator
What Is Prime-Age Participation?
The share of 25-to-54-year-olds working or looking for work, the ages when nearly everyone who will work already does.
Why Does It Matter?
Unemployment counts only people who are looking. When it falls, participation shows whether people found work or stopped looking.
Why 25 to 54, and Not Everyone?
Because the headline rate, for everyone 16 and over, moves with the age of the country: more retirees mean a lower rate even when everyone who wants a job has one. Dropping the studying and retiring years leaves a number far less swayed by age.
Can Politics Influence It?
Childcare costs, disability rules, immigration, and above all the job market move it. A parent weighing a paycheck against a daycare bill is making exactly the choice this line adds up.
Key Idea
For half a century it mostly tracked women moving into paid work, climbing from about 65% in 1948 to about 84% by the late 1990s. That rise says more about how families divided work than about any one term.
Scored: A Rise Ranks Better
Source: BLS. LNS11300060.
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