This is John Bachelor, a little under the weather.

Nicholas Aberstadt from his book about men without work gives a fair warning about labor statistics.

They are based on the assumption from decades ago, 80 years ago, that men out of work will look for work.

That is no longer the case according to Eberstadt statistics. However, the economy is showing

signs of gaining strength, weakening strength, with more hiring than expected. Are the men

going back to work is the question that cannot be answered for some time?

Is Nicholas Eversstadt on the original BLS, the original jobs number, and the assumptions of two generations ago.

More of this later.

John, of course our labor statistics were set up to fight the last war, to fight the Great Depression. Our current labor

statistics were devised to go into a force in 1941-42. We had a little kind of interruption, I can't remember what it was, so it was postponed

until the late 40s. But they were set up, basically with the assumption, which is a depression era assumption, that if a guy is out of work, he's going to be looking for a job and they didn't pay much attention to the people who were labor force dropouts.

And that was a pretty good assumption for the first two post-war decades.

Because American men were not only almost fully employed,

they were virtually fully engaged in looking for work or being part of the workforce.

It was only a tiny fraction, around 3%, little over 3% of prime age men who were neither working nor looking for work during those two decades.