Talk:Labor force
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incicolpedIUia Labor Force VS shoaiB
[edit] 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)
