It's shocking how many people still think, wrongly, that "not in the labor force" includes huge numbers of people who could be or should be working but aren't.
Today on his show Joe Pags said the number not in the labor force, currently over 94 million, does not include retired people, when, for example in 2014 the retired constituted 44% of those "not in the labor force". The truth is the retired always constitute the single largest proportion of those "not in the labor force".
The sick and disabled in 2014 accounted for almost 19%, and people going to school made up another 18% of the total "not in the labor force". Tell me there are some claiming disability who don't have one who should be working, but don't tell me the damn kids should be working. 15.5% were homemakers while 3.5% had other reasons. There's probably many people in these categories who might want a job but can't find one, or ought to be working but aren't, but nothing even remotely close to the almost 39 million retired at the time.
Joe Pags joins a long list of idiots who are quite outspoken in their ignorance about this, including Zero Hedge, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Donald Trump, et alia. Thinking there might be vast numbers of hidden unemployed in "not in the labor force" is just plain lazy stupid.
None of these apparently have had the slightest interest in checking this out on Al Gore's amazing internet using the google machine, which takes you to this page at the Bureau of Labor Statistics with one of the better explanations out there.
I can only conclude the ignorance in the case of Joe Pags is willful because Joe Pags is smarter than that. But then again, he thinks Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen.
His bad.
