Why is there a labor shortage when unemployment is low?

Question

Where is everyone working at?

In: 6379

Answer 1

Labor force participation is at 62.3%, which is where it was in Aug 1977. Pre Covid we were at 63.4%. Labor force is considered everyone age 16+.
Notice that when it was over 67% we didn’t have the super low unemployment rate we have now. A big part of this would be the number of Boomers who were working then and are now retired.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART)

Then we have the U-6 unemployment rate (U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force) at a non seasonally adjusted rate of 6.4%, down from the 8.1% it was a year ago.

The normal rate everyone hears about is the U-3 (U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate))

[https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm)

And here is the U-6, U-5, and U-3 going back to Jan 1994

[https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate](https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate)