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ECONOMIC REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT

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age men; reforming unemployment insurance to provide better search<br />

assistance and give workers more flexibility to use benefits to integrate<br />

into a new job; insuring workers against earnings losses; reforming the<br />

U.S. tax system to make participation in the workforce easier; investing<br />

in education and reforming the criminal justice and immigration<br />

systems; and increasing wages for workers by raising the minimum<br />

wage, supporting collective bargaining, and ensuring that workers have<br />

a strong voice in the labor market.<br />

the baby-boom cohorts into retirement would have been expected to lower<br />

the participation rate by roughly 0.25 percentage point a year, and so this<br />

stabilization is consistent with a strengthening economy that has brought<br />

people into, and kept people attached to, the workforce. Between 2007 and<br />

November 2016, the labor force participation rate fell 3.3 percentage points.<br />

CEA analysis finds that nearly three-quarters of this decline was due to the<br />

aging of the baby-boom generation into retirement. These demographicrelated<br />

declines will become steeper in the near term, as the peak of the babyboom<br />

generation retires. Cyclical factors, including the lingering effects of<br />

high long-term unemployment rates in the wake of the Great Recession, also<br />

played a role in reducing the labor force participation rate and may still be<br />

having a small impact. The remaining decline of the labor force participation<br />

rate beyond what can be accounted for by demographics likely reflects<br />

structural factors, including the longstanding downward trend in participation<br />

among prime-age workers, particularly among males but also among<br />

females for the past decade-and-a-half (Box 2-3). As demographic shifts<br />

and longer-term trends continue to be offset by further cyclical recovery,<br />

the participation rate is expected to remain flat in 2017 before resuming its<br />

downward trend in 2018.<br />

The Administration has proposed policies to support labor force<br />

participation through a range of measures that include promoting more<br />

flexible workplaces and paid leave, expanded high-quality pre-school,<br />

increased subsidies for child care, and a new proposal for a wage insurance<br />

system that would encourage reentry into work. As the recovery in the labor<br />

market progresses, the pace of job growth is likely to fall as the unemployment<br />

rate begins to plateau, particularly in light of increased retirements of<br />

an aging population.<br />

84 | Chapter 2

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