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| Jamie Emerson |
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| ''Education, employment, and labor force participation in the United States'' |
| ( 2023, Vol. 43 No.3 ) |
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| 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. |
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| Keywords: Labor force participation, Employment-population ratio, Cointegration, Discouraged worker, Unemployment invariance hypothesis, COVID-19 pandemic |
JEL: E2 - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment: General (includes Measurement and Data)
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| Manuscript Received : May 29 2023 | | Manuscript Accepted : Sep 30 2023 |
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