Why All the Labor Force Dropouts?

The distinguished Stanford University economist Robert Hall, co‐​architect of the famed Hall‐​Rabushka flat tax, once described himself to me as a [Bill] Clinton Democrat. Bob Hall wrote one of the most serious studies trying to figure out why the U.S. economy has remained so weak for so long. He concluded that much of the explanation lies in the ways in which recent marginal tax and transfer incentives discourage work.


In an analysis similar to that of Casey Mulligan of the University of Chicago, Hall attributes much of the startling drop in labor force participation to the expansion of federal transfer payments. Disability benefits and food stamps, in particular, are quickly phased‐​out if nonworkers take a job, or part‐​time workers switch to full‐​time work, or single‐​earner families become two‐​earner families. In other words, higher tax rates on work and more generous subsidies to leisure leave the economy with fewer people seeking work and therefore less production, lower tax revenue and greater federal spending on transfers from those who earn income to those who instead rely on government.


As Hall put it,

Labor‐​force participation fell substantially after the crisis, contributing 2.5 percentage points to the shortfall in output. The decline showed no sign of reverting as of 2013. Part is demographic and will stabilize, and part reflects low job‐​finding rates, which should return to normal slowly. But an important part may be related to the large growth in beneficiaries of disability and food‐​stamp programs. Bulges in their enrollments appear to be highly persistent. Both programs place high taxes on earnings [emphasis added] and so discourage labor‐​force participation among beneficiaries. The bulge in program dependence … may impede output and employment growth for some years into the future.