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Handbook of Population pp 263–278Cite as

9 Demography of the Labor Force

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Abstract

The labor force consists of the economically active portion of the adult population, and it is divided between the employed and the unemployed. Key measures of labor force include the labor force participation rate, the unemployment rate, and the employment-population ratio. Substantive changes in the size, composition, and distribution of the labor force are important in the development of a population’s economy. In particular since the demographic transition there have been significant increases in the number of adult women in the labor force, as well as changes in the timing of their entries and exits from the labor force. Withdrawal from the labor force for purposes of school, family responsibility, illness or disability, retirement and death are important to study and can be modeled to some extent with tables of economically active life. Self-employment and discouraged workers introduce additional difficulties in measurement.

I acknowledge the helpful assistance of Christine Slaughter, Sociology Librarian at the University of Virginia Libraries.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The term labor force is used principally in the United States. In other countries, the more commonly used term is the economically active population. Both terms refer to the population that is working plus those actively seeking work.

  2. 2.

    For a concise assessment of human capital theory, see Robinson and Browne 1994, 581–85.

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  1. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Teresa A. Sullivan

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  1. Department Sociology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Dudley L. Poston Jr.

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Sullivan, T.A. (2019). 9 Demography of the Labor Force. In: Poston, D.L. (eds) Handbook of Population. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10910-3_10

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