If you’ve been listening to Mississippi government leaders for the past several months, you’ve heard two common refrains about the state’s employment situation.
The state’s jobless rate is at an all-time low. Hurrah, hurrah!
The state’s labor force participation rate is the worst in the nation! Boo, boo!
Confused?
The two are actually connected.
One of the big reasons the state’s unemployment rate is just 2.6% — a level this state has not seen since it began tracking the number — is that not as many Mississippi’s residents are interested in working as should be.
The unemployment rate measures how many people who want to work have been unable to find it. Those who are retired, disabled, have stopped looking for work or have never been interested in working aren’t included in the calculation. Thus, a low labor force participation rate increases the odds of a low unemployment rate.
Here’s a simple illustration:
Let’s say there are 100 adults who live on a block, all of whom want to work but only 90 of them are presently employed. That block has an unemployment rate of 10%.
The next block also has 100 adults, but half of them, for whatever reason, don’t want to work or have stopped looking for a job. Of the remaining 50, 48 are employed, giving that block an unemployment rate of 4%.
Which block is probably a healthier, more desirable place to live? The one with 90 out of 100 adults working and an unemployment rate of 10%? Or the one with 48 out of 100 adults working but an unemployment rate of 4%?
The answer, of course, is the first block.
Mississippi, though, is like that second block. Its labor force participation rate is presently less than 54%, the lowest in the country and almost 9 points below the national rate. As a result, even while this state’s unemployment rate is better than the national average, we’re actually doing worse than average in terms of economic output.
Historically, Mississippi has had a low labor force participation rate, but the situation has gotten worse over the past four years. The COVID-19 pandemic surely had something to do with it, but every state had to deal with the pandemic. Most of them have rebounded, but our state has not. In fact, there are still roughly 40,000 fewer people working today in Mississippi than there were prior to the start of the pandemic in 2020.
Why is that? There are several theories. One is that Mississippi’s population is stagnant and aging, and a burst of people retired earlier than they originally planned after COVID turned the world upside down. Another is that because the state is so unhealthy and because health care has gotten harder to obtain in rural areas, it has a larger than typical number of people who are physically incapacitated and can’t work. And another is that there are too many people who don’t have a work ethic, and the pandemic only increased their number. Getting up and going to work every day is a habit. You fall out of it, and it’s hard to motivate yourself to get back in it.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann says he is going to make increasing the labor force participation rate a top focus of his next — and probably last — four years in public office. The new speaker of the House, Jason White, also says it will be a priority for him.
The government can help some, but a lot of this improvement has to come from within — within the person, within the family and within the community. Those who can work should feel a personal obligation to do so. But if they don’t feel it, they may need some nudging.
