Peak Jobs, Peak Real Wages, Peak Labor Force Participation, Peak Unionization

NOTE:  We are not claiming correlation or causality between these various charts.  That would require a degree of rigor in the social sciences that is beyond our level of expertise.  Instead, we want you to just admire the coincidence in the similar shape of these charts.

Chart of manufacturing employment, long term from 1941 until depth of "Great Recession" Part I.

Chart of real wages, dating from 1970 through 2010. We prefer the light green "Shadow Stats" graph, because we believe they are being more honest about the method of measuring inflation (cost of living).

Chart of labor force participation rate, dated 1970-2009.  Back to the level of 1979-1980, also the time of peak real wages, and peak manufacturing employment.

Percent of U.S. workers in unions vs. "middle class income share" (we're not sure how they define "middle class" on this site). The source seems to be confusing "middle income workers" for "middle class" (dentists, doctors, lawyers, small-business people etc.) But do you get the point?  The trajectory of all these charts over the past many years goes in the same direction, doesn't it?  This is what you call a systemic crisis.

IMPACT UPON THE YOUTH
(source:  "Tyler Durden" over at zerohedge.com blog)

Continuing with the theme of the secular shift in the labor pool (not cyclical, as the Fed still mistakenly believes: it will take it at least one more year to understand it has been wrong about this aspect of the New Normal economy too, just as it was wrong for decades about the Flow vs Stock debate), it is not only men who are fresh out of luck. As a reminder, we observed earlier that the labor force participation rate for men has just dropped to an all time low. It turns out there is another class of workers whose participation rate is at the lowest in series history: that of "25 year olds with a Bachelor's degree and higher", i.e. college grads. At 75.5%, it is the lowest since this data has been kept by the BLS. But not all is abysmal in America's labor force. While the share of workers with a college degree has plunged to all time lows, a bright spot can be found when observing the labor force participation rate of those who never bothered with college, and for whom high school was their last known degree-granting institution. At 59.9%, the participation rate is well of its 2012 lows of 59.0% and steadily rising, in fact, to borrow a term from the housing bulls, it may well have "bottomed". Now there is some truly great news for the future of America's highly educated workforce.