Talk:Labor force in the United States

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2021 and 11 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Makenna1113, Apervez82.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:51, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 April 2020 and 27 June 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jilliandaugherty.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:04, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

please help me understand this....
"However, child labor laws forbid businesses from employing people between the ages of 16 and 18 in hazardous jobs." I don't understand what it means. I thought when a person turns 18, that person is officially an adult. When you are an adult, you can work in hazardous jobs. Does that mean when you turn 18 you can't work in a hazardous jobs? The military is a hazardous job but you can be in the military at age 18. That doesn't make sense. (209.177.21.6 - talk)

Here, "between 16 and 18" means those people who are 16 or 17 years old. Literally, "between their 16th and 18th birthdays". The previous sentence in the article defined the labor force as all those 16 or older, and this sentence restricts that definition a bit. 87.188.208.129 11:39, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the confusion is some fairly poor editing that was done last november: A previous version of this article contained this text:

"Normally, the labor force consists of everyone of working age (typically above a certain age (around 14 to 16) and below retirement (around 65) who are participating workers, that is people actively employed or seeking employment. People not counted include students, retired people, stay-at-home parents, people in prisons or similar institutions, as well as discouraged workers who cannot find work. In the United States, the labor force is defined as people 16 years old or older who are employed or looking for work. Child labor laws in the United States forbid employing people under 18 in hazardous jobs."

but in november someone only identified by their IP rewrote the "People not counted" two-sentence passage with "people not actively looking for work", leaving only the confusing and out of context sentence about hazardous jobs.

This edit seems to have gone without challenge, even though it's quite important. The people not counted have a significant effect on the statistics. especially if the number of discouraged workers or otherwise excluded workers climbs for some reason, such as the welfare reform act of 1996, unemployment would appear to declining even though it is in fact climbing. The chart of US participation rates suggests that this is exactly what is happening. the bureau of labor statistics puts the number of discouraged workers just under half a million, but they do not report people excluded from the count because they have timed-out of welfare. Are they included in the discouraged worker count? It looks like somebody is hiding something.

In any case, this article should be clear about the reasons for exclusion, even if it's a footnote, and the out of context comment about hazardous jobs should be fixed. I await comments from the community Hans42 (talk) 19:41, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism
Seems someone has vandalized this page a little. Reporting here since I am not a member. 72.67.36.148 (talk) 21:28, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * There is no such thing as membership here. Anyone can edit  Sp in ni  ng  Spark  21:33, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

7th note/reference not available
Currently the file it directs to is not on the server (on that location). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Leendert123 (talk • contribs) 10:57, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for Editing Page
I propose to improve this article. The notice that say this artcile does not have a global perspective has drawn my attention. My efforts hope to show where workers of other countries, particularly women, stand when it comes to the labor force. I want to discuss with greater detail who is in the labor force and who is not, and who is considered unemployed and who is not (which of course depends on how we define the labor force and employment/unemployment). Some important subjects I want to discuss are: arigultural versus non-agricultural work, informal and formal labor, paid and unpaid labor. When it comes to these sectors of labor, there any many loop holes in which workers in other countries, specifically women, are misrepresented. Currently, there are many discussions about whether these various forms of labor should be included in the labor force, and if so, if the definition of the labor force should be changed into a definition that encompasses a greater majority of the world's workers. I think that the presentation of these arguments is important to remind people where women and workers outside the United States stand. My plan is to make people aware of the current debates, not to argue for a certain side of the controversial debate. Simply by including the arguments of the debates and facts abouts the workers that fall within each sector of labor I stated above, I will subtly be making a statement about why there are seemingly fewer women in the labor force. I hope to show people an in-depth view of the composition of the world's labor force. Any comments or suggestions? MariaNunez (talk) 15:34, 30 March 2011 (UTC)


 * That mostly sounds great. I have two suggestions. First, don't try to subtly make a statement about anything. If it's neutral, it can be presented without subtlety, and if it's not neutral, you should leave it out. My guess is that you can add good material which properly belongs, and is still appropriately neutral. Second, the organization could be tricky, but I expect you could get a lot of mileage out of organizing via different definitions of labor force, both those definitions used by governments and those used by economists or other social scientists. In making the distinctions between the different definitions, there will naturally arise the opportunity to describe why the organizations using those definitions think their definition is best, and critiques of the definitions. C RETOG 8(t/c) 19:08, 30 March 2011 (UTC)


 * One thing to keep in mind - current international data, like the kind gathered by WB, ILO and other international organizations does in fact count self-employed workers in agriculture, including women, even if only working only part time. There's a nice pp slide show about some of the related issues here .Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:21, 30 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the advice. I just uploaded the changes. Let me know what you think. MariaNunez (talk) 00:11, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Virtually this entire article is activist feminism. It has almost no economic studies value. Where is the number of people in the U.S labor force? Where are the many distinctions of the labor force, e.g. a discussion of the civilian labor force? As someone who needs to use econimic information in my profession, I find this page to be extremely offensive. This article is almost soley aimed at creating the point-of-view that women are discrimated against by men. Further, that there are no distictions between genders. This is the most biased and activist Wikipedia page I have ever read. I will be submitting revisions to this shameful piece of propaganda. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.235.40.107 (talk) 20:53, 5 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I've only glanced at the page content, but I agree that gender issues are overstated. That probably actually means that other issues are understated. I'd suggest you concentrate on adding needed material rather than removing gender-oriented stuff, at least at first. If organization is too hard, you might need to shift some the gender stuff to its own section. C RETOG 8(t/c) 22:10, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

The article is biased, unneutral, and unhelpful. I beg those with a proper and well-rounded, value free, knowledge of the work force and economics to re-write this entire article.
The entire article is biased as it's flooded with a near constant focus and opinion on women in the work force in almost every section, while thoroughly lacking any analysis of men (such as in the mislabled "gender" sections, which are all just about one gender) in the labor force as well as lacking information on racial characteristics of the labor force and issues relevant to that. It sounds like it's written by someone from a women's studies course, not someone with a knowledge of economics and the labour force; hence, it reads like an article about women in the labor force, not like an article about the labor force in general. I move that the entry be entirely re-written, eliminate the obvious feminist bias in the article, and at least cite basic statistics on labour force numbers. For instance, the article shamefully and curiously lacks even a simple statistic simply stating the number of people in the workforce, nevermind a breakdown among gender, race, or any other category. Personally, I found this article very confusing and unhelpful. If someone wants to create a separate article specifically about matters pertaining to women in the labour force, please do so. However, the feminist bias and female focus should be left out of this article. Alialiac (talk) 19:37, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, wanted numbers on workforce participation of We the People, found this thing. 71.243.209.128 (talk) 20:32, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Relevance of content under "Women"
The end of the first paragraph under "Gender and the US Labor force/Women", states that "This profession empowered women and allowed them to earn a living wage. At times, they were a financial help to their families". This is an obvious thing and is true for everybody. There's no point in saying that this is true for women.

"This profession" in the same text, refers to *two* industries and not just one industry or a profession. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.77.131.20 (talk) 11:28, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Adding labor force stats for people of color (POC)
I noticed that there is not a section regarding People of Color (POC) and their contribution to the Labor force in the United States. I would like to add sections comparing the statics on different demographics, focusing on POC. Makenna1113 (talk) 22:46, 1 September 2021 (UTC)Makenna1113

The Great Resignation
I wanted to mention The Great Resignation and its impact of the labor force and labor market under the COVID-19 section. Apervez82 (talk) 00:38, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Human Resource Economics Fall 2021
— Assignment last updated by Karen.ulloa (talk) 03:40, 8 December 2022 (UTC)