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The Long-Term Rise of Labor Market Detachment: Evidence from Local Labor Markets
We develop a measure of chronic joblessness among prime-age men and women in the United States—termed the detachment rate— that identifies those who have been out of the labor force for more than a year. We show that the detachment rate more than doubled for men since the early 1980s and rose by a quarter for women since 2000, though it is consistently considerably higher for women than men. We then explore the economic geography of labor market detachment to help explain its rise. Results show that the detachment rate increased more in places with weak local economies, particularly those ...