Labor force participation rate doesn’t sound exciting, does it? And most people don’t pay attention to it as much as more popular economic measures like unemployment rate or sales tax collections.
Yet it’s a crucial indicator for the long-term capabilities of an economy. It measures something simple yet important — how much of your population wants to work. If you don’t have enough people with that “want to,” you’re never going to be able to grow and are going to have trouble funding your government obligations (roads, schools, etc.) and your social aid programs.
And you can never get an accurate picture of employment without also looking at the labor force, which includes the number of people with jobs and those actively seeking employment. That’s because the unemployment rate can go down, not because of more jobs, but because more people moved away or got discouraged and gave up looking for work.
That’s been the case in Mississippi in recent years, where unemployment has been near record lows but the economy has not grown much as people have sought greener pastures elsewhere.
Yet there’s good news in the most recent jobs report: Marion County’s labor force increased by 100 in May versus April. That caused the unemployment rate to actually increase by 0.3 percent, but in the long term it’s better to have those people engaged and wanting to work. It means they feel positive about the direction of the economy and believe there are jobs out there for them.
In times of low employment, it gets difficult for companies to hire and so the hope is that it pulls potential workers off the sidelines and into the labor market. That appears to be what is happening now.
I thought it would be interesting to calculate Marion County’s labor force participation rate, which is not something I’ve seen published before. I’m not a professional at this, but here’s my methodology:
Marion County has a population of 24,715, according to 2018 census estimates. You’ve got to back out residents under 18 — 23.1 percent of the county’s total population, the census says — and 65 and older — 18.6 percent.
That leaves 58.3 percent of the overall residents in the working-age population. That’s 14,408 people.
There are 10,120 in the labor force, based on the May jobs report from the Mississippi Department of Employment Security. That makes a labor force participation rate of 70.2 percent.
How does that compare? Pretty well, actually.
The national rate has been hovering around 63 percent for the past five years. Before the Great Recession hit in 2008, it was 66 percent. While 3 percent might not sound like much, that’s a huge difference in the grand scheme.
Mississippi’s labor force participation rate is about 61 percent.
So for Marion County to be 7 percent over the national average and 9 percent over the state average is a big deal.
That means we have more people actually working per our population than most other places. Having more productive people is both strong for an area’s economy because there’s a greater workforce for potential industries to draw from and for its civic life.
Although sometimes it might seem like too many working-age people are living off the public dime through welfare programs or Social Security disability insurance (I’m speaking of those who aren’t truly disabled but could work if they wanted to), take heart that it’s worse elsewhere. And because of that, Marion County is situated at a competitive advantage.
Charlie Smith is editor and publisher of The Columbian-Progress. Reach him at (601) 736-2611 or csmith@columbianprogress.com.
