Public Transportation and Smart Growth

because of a lack of bus drivers. I hear we're not alone.

I've lost bus service (well, I can still walk 1.5 miles (30 minutes) to catch a bus that runs every 2 hours).

The rest of the service has become unreliable as we have numerous same-day cancellations.

These measures are forcing people who managed without a car to have to get one.

Nationally, the labor force participation rate has been dwindling from a high point of about 67.3% in 2000 to 62.2% now. (It was 62.2% in January, so there hasn't been any progress in that all year).

Meanwhile the population of elderly (such as me) needing more and more service (me not yet but soon) grows.

Labor force participation rate: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

Labor force in thousands: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11000000



In Minnesota, there are 90,000 fewer workers than before the pandemic.

The labor force = employed + officially unemployed as per the BLS's monthly Household Survey

The officially unemployed are jobless people who have looked for work in the past 4 weeks (must be more than just looking at job listings). BTW, the officially unemployed is not a count of people claiming unemployment insurance, it has nothing to do with that (a common myth unfortunately).

How the Government Measures Unemployment http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm

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I don't see the situation getting any better. Oh, temporarily, if we have a recession, but not in the long run. Economists have been warning about this for at least 2 decades. Now it is starting to bite. Hard. Replacing the freely given labor of people driving their own cars with train and bus drivers won't be possible, unless we open the immigration spigot wider than its ever been.