Testimony on Lower Labor Force Participation Rates

What Lower Labor Force Participation Rates Tell Us about Work Opportunities and Incentives

Chairman Coats, Ranking Member Maloney, and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before the Joint Economic Committee today. Policy cannot succeed but accidentally if we do not have a clear understanding of the problems that face us. It is my belief that much of what we think we know about living standards, economic insecurity, and the state of the economy is incorrect, based on a mistaken read of the available data. Furthermore, our misinterpretation of the data, more often than not, translates into an exaggeration of the economic challenges we face. I hope I can illustrate this today and provide a new way to think about labor force participation data and what they mean for opportunity and incentives.

Read the full testimony here.