International Comparisons of Annual Labor Force Statistics, Adjusted to U.S. Concepts, 10 Countries, 1970-2008

SECTION 4.  WORKING-AGE POPULATION

Introduction

The labor market statistics provided in this report describe the working-age population. In the United States, the working-age population is more specifically known as the civilian non-institutional working-age population:

• "Civilian" refers to persons who are not on active duty in the military;
• "Non-institutional" refers to persons who are not in institutions, such as prison inmates or those in a mental institution; and
• "Working-age" refers to persons 16 years of age and older.

Data also refer to the civilian non-institutional working-age population for the foreign-country data except for Japan and Germany, where the institutional population is included. The lower age limit is 16 for the United States; the lower age limits for the foreign countries are shown in Figure 4-1.

Data are, in fact, adjusted to the age at which compulsory schooling ends for each country except for Canada and the Netherlands. For Canada, adjusted data cover persons ages 16 and over for 1976 onward, whereas the age at which compulsory schooling ends remains at 15. For the Netherlands, adjusted data cover persons ages 15 and over for 1975 onward, although the age at which compulsory schooling ends is now 16.

Figure 4-1  Lower Age Limits

For some countries, the data reported by the national statistical agency have an upper age limit. BLS adjusts for this divergence from the U.S. concept; therefore, the adjusted series have no upper age limit.

The working-age population data presented in this section are used to calculate employment-population ratios (Table 2-10, Table 2-11, Table 2-12) and labor force participation rates (Table 3-3, Table 3_4, and Table 3-5).

Tables

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Last Modified Date: October 2, 2009