2014-12-28

Missing the Demographic Shift

There has been a lot of discussion about demographics driving a boost in employment growth in the United States. This blog post is one of the better ones on the subject, CNBC and the "Job Surge of 2015" and Demographics, but it still misses the shift in racial and ethnic demographics. Labor force participation and unemployment rates are different for various ethnic and racial groups.

Also, home ownership data from the Census:
For the racial categories shown below, the homeownership rate for the third quarter 2014 for non-Hispanic White householders reporting a single race was highest at 72.6 percent. The rate for All Other Races householders was second at 54.2 percent and Black Alone householders was lowest at 42.9 percent.

Different average ages of each racial group make this data less than useful, but differences in home ownership rates tend to be observable in the data across age cohorts. Simplistic comparisons to old data will have a higher than expected error rate unless they adjust for the current population demographics.

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