Quote from: PirateHatForTea on December 14, 2013, 04:31:40 AM

Or perhaps it is about there being extenuating circumstances for the extreme downturn in US participation rate - fair enough, you'd be right. But you can't deny that at least recently, jobs that disappear form the system have not come back - perhaps we have entered an era of 'ratcheting down' of jobs.

That was my point, that the jobs disappearing and not coming back is a recent phenomenon, while technological progress is not. This suggests that something other than the increase in technological development is causing this drop.

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Your comments about women in the workforce in eg USSR in the early 20th century are a red herring.

It was a response to the claim that the only reason we had a growth in labor since the 50s was due to women entering the workforce. In America, maybe, but they were already working in other countries.