CEPR:

There are many different measures that can be cited to make this point. The employment to population ratio for prime age workers (between the ages 25-54) is almost three full percentage points below its pre-recession level. (This gets around the claim that the problem is baby boomers retiring. These people are not leaving the labor force to retire.) The number of people who report working part-time involuntarily is still close to 2 million (@50 percent) above pre-recession levels.

But my favorite measure is the quit rate, the percentage of unemployment due to people who voluntarily quit their jobs. This is very useful because it is a real measure of people voting with their feet. The quit rate is telling us the extent to which workers have enough confidence in their job prospects to tell their asshole boss to get lost and then walk out the door.

In a good labor market people are willing to do this. In a bad labor market the risk is just too great. Workers are worried that it may be months, or longer, before they get a new job. So what do the data say?

Well, the quit rate is up a great deal from the troughs of the Great Recession. It had been as low as 5.6 percent in the middle of 2009 just after the economy had shed almost 8 million jobs. In the January data it was up to 9.5 percent. But this only looks good by comparison. The quit rate had been hovering just under 12.0 percent in the two years prior to the recession.

And for those old enough to remember, that was not exactly a great job market. Wages were at best inching ahead of inflation. if we go back to the late 1990s, which really was a good job market, the quit rate was over 13.0 percent and even got as high as 15.2 percent in April of 2000 Here's the picture.

He's right about the importance of the quit rate. I hope Janet is paying attention to that, too.

But he's a little too dogmatic in pooh-poohing the prime-age employment/population ratio. Calculated Risk thinks there is a structural element to that (e.g. people going back to school, or staying in school longer now than in the past - not all due to the crappy job market):

The 25 to 54 participation rate increased in January to 81.1%, and the 25 to 54 employment population ratio increased to 77.2%. As the recovery continues, I expect the participation rate for this group to increase a little more (or at least stabilize for a couple of years) - although the participation rate has been trending down for this group since the late '90s.

It probably would take a significant fundamental change in the economy (e.g. free universal child care and guaranteed paid leave) for the employment/population ratio to get up to the values in the '90s, but with luck the number will continue to creep up over the next few months.

Cheers,
Scott.