With the unemployment rate essentially back to prerecession levels, economists have been paying increased attention to the labor force participation rate (LFPR). Many economists, including those at the Congressional Budget Office 
, believe untapped resources remain on the sidelines of the labor market.
What exactly does "on the sidelines" entail? Discouraged workers are only a small part of the story. To help unravel the rest of the mystery behind the elevated share of people not participating, we at the Atlanta Fed use the microdata from the Current Population Survey to code the activities of persons not in the labor force. We then calculate how changes in each activity contribute to the total change in the LFPR.
The chart below depicts the drivers of the change in the LFPR from the first quarter of 2016 to the first quarter of 2017. (The interactive tool on our website allows you to make comparisons across gender, age group, and time.) The LFPR rose just slightly (about 0.06 percentage points). However, that small change was the net result of much larger countervailing forces. Other things equal, demographic changes during the year would have lowered the LFPR by around 0.14 percentage points. The aging of the population put significant downward pressure on the LFPR (pushing it down 0.24 percentage points), but a more educated workforce helped push up the LFPR (0.10 percentage points). If the age and education mix of the population had not changed, the LFP rate would have risen by about 0.19 percentage points (see the chart).
The following chart further breaks down the behavioral and cyclical components at work. After controlling for shifts in the demographic mix of the population during the year, the largest contributing factor was a decline in the rate of nonparticipation because of family responsibilities.
This is a particularly important explanation for prime-age women (defined as women between 25 and 54 years of age). A smaller share of prime-age women who say they are busy with home and/or family responsibilities accounts for about half of the 0.62 percentage point increase in LFPR that occurred between the first quarter of 2016 and the first quarter of 2017 (see the chart).
To examine factors affecting prime-age men's participation or to learn more about the cyclical and structural factors behind each reason, visit our website.
Ellyn Terry, an economic policy analysis specialist in the Atlanta Fed's research department