Monday Morning Optimism: 5/15/23
Happy Mother's Day
Welcome to our Monday Morning Optimism series. To start each week, we’ll send you an economic trend/fact/idea that shows how some aspect of the economy (or world) has improved over time.
The employment to population ratio for prime age women (25-54 years old, despite what Don Lemon might tell you) reached a record high of 75.1% in April, surpassing the previous high set in April 2000.
If you want to read more about how well women are doing in this economy, we wrote a longer post about it back in March.
What’s Next
Week in Review (for paying subscribers) will go out this coming Friday, and every other Friday too. We’re also working on a set of dueling posts where I make the case we won’t have a recession in the next twelve months and Anirban argues the opposite.
Your optimism is misplaced on Mothers' day. You are assuming that a higher percentage of working age women in the workplace is a good thing. In reality, women have long been able to find work outside the home. When you combine this data with the fact that the number of children born without a father in the home keeps growing, the picture is bleaker and bleaker. What woman would rather work for someone else rather than take care of her own children? Your data merely supports the notion that mothers are now forced to both work outside the home, and inside the home, because of poor economic choices by the government and society. This is a net loss for women, not a gain. Optimism? Pshaw. F.J. Collins