Comment by chimeracoder

> wait, how many workers fall outside the 16-65 range??

A little less than 10% of the workforce.

GP is correct - basically there was a report making that claim about the decline in employment rates of US-born workers over a certain time period. It was almost immediately debunked because it excluded workers older than 65, who are almost exclusively US-born, and excluding them heavily skews the average. Many of these workers also aged out of that bucket during that time period, which makes the comparison misleading, since the actual size of the studied workforce varied, and the workers who were excluded from the studied cohort were strongly correlated with the effect they were trying to demonstrate.

Furthermore, that effect is also exacerbated because of the uneven distribution of baby boomers.