the "Working Age Employment Rate"

[Demovictory9]

Thankfully, there is a much better measure of slack, which analysts like Nick Bunker of the Center for Equitable Growth and Adam Ozimek of Moody’s Analytics have been advocating for years: The prime age employment to population ratio—which, as I said above, is what I’ve dubbed the working-age employment rate, because it just tells you the percentage of Americans between the ages of 25 to 54 who have a job. In other words, it tells you what share of Americans you’d expect to be working are actually gainfully employed.


Take one quick glance at the the working-age employment rate, and I’m sure you’ll notice the obvious: The labor market is still only about four-fifths recovered from the recession. The employment rate is steadily improving. But there are still a lot of Americans who could use a job right now.

https://slate.com/business/2018/05/the-unemployment-rate-is-historically-low-and-meaningless.html

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1. Right, the unemployment rate is based only on those seeking work

When it's hard to get a good job, people stop looking and change plans -- stay at home to raise kids or go back to school, e.g.

Only when unemployment is very low do these people start to return en masse to the workforce.

This hidden slack is one reason why wages don't immediately go up when we hit "full employment" on the unemployment rate.