"Why has the employment–population ratio declined in the United States?"

From the Monthly Labor Review: Why has the employment–population ratio declined in the United States? by Lawrence H. Leith, April 2021

Leith writes:

In a recent article titled “Explaining the decline in the U.S. employment-to-population ratio: a review of the evidence” (Journal of Economic Literature, September 2020), former Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Katharine G. Abraham and her coauthor, economist Melissa S. Kearney, examine these trends for the period from 1999 to 2018 and seek to explain the economic factors driving them.

Abraham and Kearney quantify and rank some of the factors that contributed to the declines in the employment–population ratios among prime-age men and women over the 1999–2018 period. The authors warn that none of the factors they examine work in isolation and are, in fact, interrelated; moreover, they were unable to quantify some of the factors because the evidence was too sparse. Nevertheless, Abraham and Kearney find that “labor demand factors are the most important drivers” of the overall decline in the employment–population ratio among 25- to 54-year-olds over the period. In particular, they cite the marked increased in imported goods from China as the single most important factor driving the decline...

Abraham and Kearney also find that labor supply factors have been less important than labor demand factors in the decline of the employment–population ratio for 25- to 54-year-olds over the past two decades.