“The number of Americans in the workforce compared to the country’s population began to drop long before the Great Recession – particularly for the less educated and the young — representing an historical turnaround in the evolution of U.S. employment, according to a new paper presented today at the Fall 2012 Conference on the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA). Among those hit the hardest: unmarried women. And the trend is expected to continue for some time. The reasons why remain a mystery. Policymakers and economists continue to be puzzled by the decline in the employment, which has yet to recover from the 2007-9 recession. In The U.S. Employment-Population Reversal in the 2000s: Facts and Explanations, Robert A. Moffitt of Johns Hopkins University examines the trends in the employment to population ratio and finds that the decline began in the year 2000, was made worse by the recent recession, and is unlikely to bounce back any time soon. The decline is disproportionately concentrated among the less educated and younger groups – particularly among unmarried women, he finds.”