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.

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 impact 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.

Employment vs Employment at the Pre-Covid EPR

Hooray for the Barbell!

Once again age group 16-19 is the clear winner in the recovery. 

There are 5.398 million employed in this age group. Had employment been at the pre-pandemic ratio there would have been 5.282 million workers. 

Once again, age group 60-64 is doing second best followed by age group 55-59 and then 65+.

These are relative hoorays, but it does put a spotlight on the struggles of the prime age groups 25-54.

Employment-Population Ratio Changes

Barbell Again

The employment-population ratio of age group 16-19 is the only age group that has a ratio higher now than pre-Covid. 

I calculated the numbers directly from BLS data but you can confirm on Fred. 

Once again, the barbell holds. Next, best is age group 60-64 followed by 65+.