Rachel Barber

speaker

271 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 21 Aug

Rachel Barber’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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The Excerpt · America’s workforce is shrinking. What’s going on? · 22 Jul 2026 podcast

It's declined for workers 55 and older.

And then if you look at specific demographic groups like women, for instance, but also men, it has declined.

So yes, we're seeing it rise for younger workers.

And that's a piece of good news considering the sort of narrative out there that entry-level workers are most at risk as we go through this period of AI adoption.

But for whatever reason, maybe perhaps just because it's

the summer or what, you know, after they've graduated, or maybe they have time and a break from school to work.

We're seeing the 16 to 24 labor force participation rate rise.

So, but for most everyone else, it has declined.

So I think that's something that we have to sort of wait and see, but there are theories out there.

And the first is kind of an obvious one, that the U.S.

has an aging population.

We're seeing the baby boomers retire.

This was expected.

The other piece of this is lower immigration.

Given the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration, we have seen lower both undocumented and legal immigration to the United States.

That could be playing a part and a myriad of other things as well.

But what actually...

sort of matters for the US economy is that this could affect potential economic growth in the United States going forward.

So let me break that down a little bit.

US economic growth is a function of two things.

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