We have written before about the obvious problem with the nation’s falling employment rates. These rates, unlike the unemployment rates, are not jimmied when job seekers lose hope and just stop looking for work.

And, as we have written several times, including here and here, the employment data, technically called the “Labor Force Participation Rate,” picture isn’t good.

Graph Source: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000Clearly, a lower proportion of adults are employed now in the US than was true back before the recession started in 2008.But, why is this happening?

Brookings Institution now finally weights in on this important topic (where have they been until now?).Looking at the Age 25 to 54 group, Brookings says recently both male and female employment has been dropping in the US.

In typical, equivocal fashion, Brookings says several factors might be involved, but they admit that one prime suspect is that more and more Americans are unprepared for the available jobs.

That is apparently the more focused opinion of the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA). The CEA says in its 2016 report:

“Participation rates by educational attainment, previously quite similar, have diverged since the 1960s. In 1964, 98 percent of prime-age men with a college degree or more participated in the workforce, compared to 97 percent of men with a high school degree or less. In 2015, the rate for college-educated men had fallen slightly to 94 percent while the rate for men with a high school degree or less had plummeted to 83 percent.”

On Page 41 of its report, the CEA says:

“Labor force participation for prime-age men is increasingly a function of education, compounding the long-standing and growing differences in earnings between college graduates and men with less education.”

That’s not a surprise to people talking to Kentucky employers. They have literally thousands of unfilled jobs thanks to the under-education of the potential workforce.

And, if we don’t do education better in Kentucky, this situation will only get worse. Even Brookings finally seems to have figured this out.