The US-Born Employment and Population Boom That Wasn’t

The best single measure of the health of the job market is probably the employment-population ratio for ages 25 through 54. The unemployment rate can be pushed downward when times are bad by people giving up on looking for jobs and upward when times are good by the opposite. The overall employment-population rate is being pushed downward at the moment by the aging of the US population. Prime-age Epop, as it’s known, avoids all those distortions.

How is the job market looking for prime-age native-born Americans? Pretty good. Their prime-age Epop was 81.5% in November, the same as in November 2024, only slightly lower than the 81.8% in November 2023 and higher than in any other November since 2007, which is how far back these statistics are available. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not adjust these numbers for seasonal factors, which is why there’s a cyclical up-and-down pattern and why I’m comparing with other Novembers rather than, say, last January.