“In past months, The Hamilton Project has examined the toll the Great Recession has taken on various segments of the population through its employment analysis—looking at the plight of men, women, the young and the old. These groups have all been impacted in different ways, with young workers having been particularly hard hit and leaving the labor force in great numbers. A hallmark of each employment analysis has been an examination of the “jobs gap,” or the number of jobs that the U.S. economy needs to create in order to return to pre-recession employment rates, while also absorbing the people who enter the labor force each month. In this month’s analysis, we examine how changing demographics will impact the composition of America’s workforce over the next several years. As the Baby Boomers retire, immigration flows change, and the number of young people entering the labor force declines, the number of new jobs needed to maintain pre-recession employment norms will decline. By breaking down these changes and accounting for labor force growth, we can better understand how long it will take for the labor market to fully recover, and what the labor force may look like in the new economy. At the end of this post, we use these labor force projections to update our calculation of the jobs gap.”