Hooray! Employment in Age Group 16-19 is Fully Recovered, Who Else is Winning?

Unfortunately, no one else is winning but let's see who is close.

Author:
Mish
Publish date:
May 10, 2021

Employment Change Pre-Pandemic to Now 2021-04

Barbell Employment Recovery

Employment in age group 16-19 is fully recovered.
Employment in age group 60-64 is nearly recovered and perhaps will do so next month.
The next best recovery is in age group 65+.

I created the above chart from a BLS Data Download. All age groups are seasonally adjusted except 55-59, 60-64, and 65+.

The BLS does not have seasonally-adjusted data for those age groups.

I did not use unadjusted data across the board because school and seasonal employment dramatically impacts younger age groups.

Verification Test

To see if the numbers make sense, I matched the numbers to a seasonal adjustment of the entire Employment Level on Fred.

April 2021 is 151,176
Feb 2020 is 158,732
Difference is -7,556

I came up with -7,372 and that is about as close if not closer than one could reasonably expect totaling 8 different age groups vs one seasonally-adjusted total.

Employment Population Ratios

Since there are shifts in the populations of various age groups we must also look at employment population ratios to see who is winning and who isn't.

The employment population ratio (EPR) is the percent of people employed divided by the working age population.