“consistent & wholesome plans
digested by common counsels,
& modified by mutual interests”

— Geo.  Washington, 1796,
to the American citizenry

the 21st-century decline in American employment

US employment (by year & by decade), 1947-2024 the percentage in each year (the average throughout the year) from 1947-2024 and the percentage in each decade (the average throughout the decade) from 1947-1956 — 2015-2024 of the civilian noninstitutional population 16 years of age and over in the United States who are employed ’47 ’48 ’49 1950 ’51 ’52 ’53 ’54 1955 ’56 ’57 ’58 ’59 1960 ’61 ’62 ’63 ’64 1965 ’66 ’67 ’68 ’69 1970 ’71 ’72 ’73 ’74 1975 ’76 ’77 ’78 ’79 1980 ’81 ’82 ’83 ’84 1985 ’86 ’87 ’88 ’89 1990 ’91 ’92 ’93 ’94 1995 ’96 ’97 ’98 ’99 2000 ’01 ’02 ’03 ’04 2005 ’06 ’07 ’08 ’09 2010 ’11 ’12 ’13 ’14 2015 ’16 ’17 ’18 ’19 2020 ’21 ’22 ’23 ’24 65% 65% 64% 64% 63% 63% 62% 62% 61% 61% 60% 60% 59% 59% 58% 58% 57% 57% 56% 56% 55% 55% 50% 50% 40% 40% 30% 30% 20% 20% 10% 10% 0% 0% Prepared for the National Unity Common Counsels: the Geo.  Washington model™. source:   Household Data; Table A-1. Employment status of the civilian population by sex and age, Not seasonally adjusted Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab1.htm 1947 to 2024 annual averages,   Series titles:   (Unadj) Population Level, (Unadj) Employment Level Division of Labor Force Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Copyright 2025 the National Political Independence Convention™, Inc.


We note here that in the final year of the 20th century, the percentage of adult Americans who were employed reached its highest level in recorded history: 64.40%.   Out of 212,577,000 adults — the total civilian noninstitutional population 16 years of age and over in the United States — 136,891,000 were employed.   That was also the highest absolute number ever, up to that time, of employed adults in America.

Then, in the first year of the new millennium, the Second Great Depression’s first wave hit with the Crash of ’01.   The employment percentage dropped 2.12% by 2003 — to 62.28%: the lowest it’d been since 1993.   The growth over seven years, to its height in 2000, was eroded in just three years.

It climbed back above 63% in 2006.   The second wave of Great Depression II — the three years beginning in the Crash of ’08, in which the employment percentage plummeted 4.52% — took it down under 58 and a half percent: the lowest since 1983, 27 years earlier.   The increase in employment that took 13 years, from 1983 to 1996 — when it got above 63% for the first time ever — was lost in this three-year period.

It took steady growth for the employment percentage just to get above 60 and a half percent, in 2019, for the first time since the ’08 Crash.   With the 2020 Crash in the Second Great Depression’s third wave, it collapsed 4% in that single year — dropping it to barely 56 and three quarters percent.   The percentage of adult Americans employed hadn’t been this low since 1975, 45 years before that.

In 2003, the percentage again climbed above 60% — to 60.33%.   The last time, before the onset of Great Depression II, that the adult American employment percentage had been this low was 38 years earlier — in 1985, which was the first year when it had gotten over 60%.

Then in 2024, the most recent full year on record, the percentage of American adults who are employed has stalled again — falling a quarter of a percent.   The average for the year has dropped to 60.08%.

Next we take note of the percentage of adult Americans who have been employed throughout each entire decade, year by year, since the late 1940s.

This reached its height, of 63.38%, in the decade of 1994 through 2003.

We see here that after a period of uninterrupted growth for 20 years — measured over each decade from year to year — this growth was stalled for five years.   This plateau of stalled growth began when employment increased by only six hundredths of a percent from the 1993-2002 decade to the decade of 1994-2003.   The decade-to-decade changes in the plateau continued to remain under a tenth of a percent — dropping each year consecutively by 0.02%, 0.02%, 0.01%, and culminating with a 0.08% drop in the decade of 1998-2007 compared to that of 1997-2006.

The following year, it tumbled nearly two tenths of a percent.   And over the next 10 years it fell 3.87%, an average decline of almost four tenths of a percent a year.   It dropped every single year, from that 63.38% height in the 1994-through-2003 decade, for 15 straight years.

Over this most recently recorded decade — 2015 through 2024 — adult employment has averaged 59.59%.   Before the start of the Second Great Depression, it hadn’t been below 59 and three quarters percent since the decade of 1978-1987 — 37 years ago.

The most recent time, prior to Great Depression II, that employment in one decade — compared to the decade ended a year earlier — failed to grow by more than one tenth of a percent was from the decade of 1973 through 1982 to the 1974-through-1983 decade, when it remained unchanged at 58.17% (within a hundredth of a percent).

In the 13 years, from the 1975-through-1984 decade to the 1988-through-1997 decade, employment growth averaged more than thirty-two hundredths of a percent each year.   From that point, if we had kept it growing at just that 0.32%, then this 2015-through-2024 decade would have had an average adult employment over 70% — and from there, if we were to maintain that growth, then when kids born in 2024 turn 21, they would be at the beginning of a decade averaging better than 80% employment.

Are Americans capable of this?

If America hasn’t been capable of it, what has been keeping us down?

And if we really are capable of it, then what is it that holds us back now?

We can look at the collapse of the American labor force too.

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