July 21, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Labor supply in a tight labor market
With the
unemployment rate at a 30-year low in 1999, some have been concerned that
the demand for labor may outstrip supply. About 133.5 million workers were
classified as employed in 1999: there are several concepts that have been
used in the discussion of potential labor supply beyond that.
![Labor force status, 1999 (in millions)](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20120924202801im_/http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2000/Jul/wk3/art05.gif)
[Chart data—TXT]
Unemployed workers represent an existing labor supply, in that they
are, by definition, available for work and most are currently conducting
an active job search. In some sense, they also represent potential
employees in the sense that they have not found a job. In 1999, the number
of unemployed averaged 5.9 million.
Moving beyond the unemployed to look for potential workers, 4.6 million
people outside the labor force reported that they wanted a job. They were
not actively looking for work at the time of the survey for any of a
number of reasons including school, family responsibilities, and
discouragement about their employment prospects.
Even beyond this possible source of labor, there are quite surely
conditions under which some of the 63.8 million persons who are not in the
labor force and report that they do not want a job might enter the labor
market. Finally, there is a fresh supply of labor that originates from
growth in the working-age population.
These data are the product of the Current
Population Survey. The labor force
is the sum of the employed plus the unemployed, as officially defined. For
more information, read "Labor Supply in a Tight Labor Market," (PDF
29K) Issues
in Labor Statistics summary 00-13, June 2000.
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
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Read more »