Wednesday, September 27, 2023
No Result
View All Result
  • Media
Support Us
Macdonald-Laurier Institute
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • Economic policy
      • Health Care
      • Innovation
      • Justice
      • Social issues
      • Telecoms
    • Energy Policy
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy
      • Foreign Affairs
      • National Defence
      • National Security
    • Indigenous Affairs
  • Projects
    • The Great Energy Crisis
    • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
    • Dragon at the Door
    • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
    • The Transatlantic Program
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • Competition Policy in Canada
    • Speak for Ourselves
    • Justice Report Card
    • COVID Misery Index
      • Provincial COVID Misery Index
      • Beyond Lockdown
      • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
    • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
      • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
    • Past Projects
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
      • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
      • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
      • Straight Talk
      • Labour Market Report
      • Leading Economic Indicator
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Libraries
    • Inside Policy
    • Papers
    • Commentary
    • Columns
    • Books
    • Video
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • Economic policy
      • Health Care
      • Innovation
      • Justice
      • Social issues
      • Telecoms
    • Energy Policy
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy
      • Foreign Affairs
      • National Defence
      • National Security
    • Indigenous Affairs
  • Projects
    • The Great Energy Crisis
    • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
    • Dragon at the Door
    • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
    • The Transatlantic Program
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • Competition Policy in Canada
    • Speak for Ourselves
    • Justice Report Card
    • COVID Misery Index
      • Provincial COVID Misery Index
      • Beyond Lockdown
      • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
    • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
      • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
    • Past Projects
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
      • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
      • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
      • Straight Talk
      • Labour Market Report
      • Leading Economic Indicator
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Libraries
    • Inside Policy
    • Papers
    • Commentary
    • Columns
    • Books
    • Video
No Result
View All Result
Macdonald-Laurier Institute

Plummeting labour force participation rate a telling sign behind Trump’s rise: Crowley in the Globe

May 25, 2017
in Columns, In the Media, Latest News
Reading Time: 4 mins read
A A

Brian Lee CrowleyThe drop in the labour force participation rate – a measure of how many people have given up even looking for work – goes a long way towards explaining US President Donald Trump’s sudden and unexpected rise to power, writes Brian Lee Crowley in the Globe and Mail.

By Brian Lee Crowley, May 26, 2017

What do we know about the people who Donald Trump turned into such a potent political force in the last election? US unemployment is well below five percent; surely there was no objective basis for the economic insecurities that drove the “basket of deplorables” to vote for the Republican candidate.

Consider, though, that one of the best places to seek insight is not the unemployment rate, but the “labour-force participation” or LFP. The LFP shows the share of working age people who have jobs or are actively seeking jobs in the US. In other words it is also a pretty good measure of how many people have left the workforce because they are discouraged and feel there are no opportunities for them. What do we know about them?

Trump’s election coincides with the US LFP rate hitting its lowest level in more than 30 years. The state-by-state figures  provide even more insight into Donald Trump’s political resonance.

One of the best places to seek insight is not the unemployment rate, but the “labour-force participation”

Nine out of 10 states with the lowest LFP rates voted for him. Of the five states that went from Blue to Red in 2016, three – Florida, Michigan and Ohio – experienced a drop in their participation rate relative to 2012, meaning a smaller share of people worked and were looking for work compared to four years earlier. The other two states had no increase in the share of people working despite several years of modest economic growth.

By contrast, the years of Bill Clinton’s presidency coincided with a high LFP rate, a time when workers were prepared to give Bill “I feel your pain” Clinton the benefit of the doubt about how trade would improve Americans’ standard of living and those harmed would not be left behind. No more. That good will is gone.

New research from the centre-right American Enterprise Institute think tank shows that millions of American men are jobless and have given up looking. The share of men 20 and older without paid work is nearly 32 percent. That bears repeating: basically a third of all men in America who are over 20 have no paid employment. Two economists at the centre-left Brookings Institution have now added that the LFP rate of prime-age women has stagnated and also declined. People collecting disability benefit has increased markedly.

This doesn’t just affect their job prospects. Other research, including by a Nobel laureate, shows that the life expectancy and health of these displaced and discouraged workers has gone into a tailspin thanks largely to illnesses related to drug and alcohol abuse and other “lifestyle” factors. As one analyst said, these people are dying of despair, with over half a million needless deaths being attributed to bleak job prospects.

So looking solely at the unemployment rate causes us to lose sight entirely of a major part of the population. This segment is not just constituted of men–and now increasingly women–left behind by economic change. It also includes their parents, friends, and colleagues, who see these people they care about left on the shelf and are angered that opportunities for them seem so few and far between. This starts to be a significant part of the population—and the electorate.

A pervasive feeling has taken hold in many parts of American society that ordinary people are being made to pay the price of the ideals of the elites.

It is no answer to say that these people have misdiagnosed their plight when they follow Trump in seeing trade and immigration as the cause of their problems. Yes, the problem is far more down to automation and other productivity-enhancements, meaning that manufacturing requires fewer and fewer poorly-educated, relatively low-skilled workers. Yes, Trump is wrong when he says that America doesn’t make things anymore and needs to return to this economic vocation. The truth is that America has never made more things than it does today. It just doesn’t require many workers to do so.

But the fact that the diagnosis is incorrect misses the key point about Trump’s voters – they vote for him chiefly because they feel he is the only political leader who doesn’t simply dismiss their fears and anxieties as misguided and ill-informed and doesn’t tell them condescendingly that their problems will disappear if only they get a university degree or if the government institutes a guaranteed annual income and basically writes them off as contributing members of society.

A pervasive feeling has taken hold in many parts of American society that ordinary people are being made to pay the price of the ideals of the elites. Free trade is one such ideal, one in which I happen to believe, but also one whose highly-concentrated destructive effects are undeniable and frequently easier to identify than its widely-dispersed benefits. That is why free trade can only be sustained when the winners use the extra wealth created to compensate the losers – something we, like the Americans, have done poorly and unimaginatively.

Brian Lee Crowley (twitter.com/brianleecrowley) is the Managing Director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an independent non-partisan public policy think tank in Ottawa: www.macdonaldlaurier.ca.

Share this:
Tags: Brian Lee CrowleyDonald TrumpGlobe and Mail
Previous Post

Canada needs to build on emerging Japan-India axis as a counterweight to China: Brian Lee Crowley in the Hill Times

Next Post

A Path to More Substantial Health-Care Reform: Sean Speer for Inside Policy

Related Posts

Gender diverse prisoners and sex-based patterns of offending
Commentary

Gender diverse prisoners and sex-based patterns of offending

September 26, 2023
Cabinet shuffles are OK but a PMO shakeup is what we need: Philip Cross in the Financial Post
Columns

Is the ‘New Ottawa Consensus’ killing our economy?: Jon Hartley in the Hub

September 25, 2023
Zelenskyy meeting with Trudeau: Aurel Braun on CTV News
Video

Zelenskyy meeting with Trudeau: Aurel Braun on CTV News

September 25, 2023
Next Post
Sean Speer, US deficit, deficit reduction

A Path to More Substantial Health-Care Reform: Sean Speer for Inside Policy

Newsletter Signup

Follow us on

Macdonald-Laurier Institute

323 Chapel Street, Suite #300
Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 7Z2 Canada

613.482.8327

info@macdonaldlaurier.ca
MLI directory

Support Us

Support the Macdonald-Laurier Institute to help ensure that Canada is one of the best governed countries in the world. Click below to learn more or become a sponsor.

Support Us

  • Inside Policy Magazine
  • Annual Reports
  • Jobs
  • Privacy Policy

© 2021 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • Economic policy
      • Health Care
      • Innovation
      • Justice
      • Social issues
      • Telecoms
    • Energy Policy
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy
      • Foreign Affairs
      • National Defence
      • National Security
    • Indigenous Affairs
  • Projects
    • The Great Energy Crisis
    • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
    • Dragon at the Door
    • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
    • The Transatlantic Program
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • Competition Policy in Canada
    • Speak for Ourselves
    • Justice Report Card
    • COVID Misery Index
      • Provincial COVID Misery Index
      • Beyond Lockdown
      • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
    • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
      • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
    • Past Projects
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
      • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
      • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
      • Straight Talk
      • Labour Market Report
      • Leading Economic Indicator
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Libraries
    • Inside Policy
    • Papers
    • Commentary
    • Columns
    • Books
    • Video

© 2021 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

IDEAS CHANGE THE WORLD!Have the latest Canadian thought leadership delivered straight to your inbox.
First Name
Last Name
Email address

No thanks, I’m not interested.