{"id":146302,"date":"2026-07-06T12:06:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T16:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=146302"},"modified":"2026-07-06T21:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T01:10:08","slug":"paul-kedrosky-ai-immigration-and-collapsing-labor-force-participation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=146302","title":{"rendered":"(Paul Kedrosky) AI, Immigration, and Collapsing Labor Force Participation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The U.S. labor force participation rate has quietly returned to levels last seen in the 1970s (outside the recent pandemic). It increasingly seems to signal a structural shift in how society works, with a shrinking share of adults participating directly in the production of goods and services. The consequences extend well beyond slower economic growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Some implications:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>A growing share of U.S. society has no direct stake in labor markets.<\/strong>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>As fewer adults work or seek work, a larger fraction of voters experience the economy mostly as consumers, retirees, or rentiers, not as workers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>That changes political incentives around wages, immigration, AI, taxation, and redistribution.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The economy becomes increasingly dependent on a shrinking core.<\/strong>&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/paulkedrosky.com\/ai-immigration-and-collapsing-labor-force-participation\/\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. labor force participation rate has quietly returned to levels last seen in the 1970s (outside the recent pandemic). It increasingly seems to signal a structural shift in how society works, with a shrinking share of adults participating directly<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=146302\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,40,209,149,597,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-watch","category-economics-politics","category-americau-s-a","category-economy","category-laborlabor-unionslabor-market","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=146302"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146307,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146302\/revisions\/146307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}