The beauty of this measure is that it accounts for demographic changes, and so we can get a better read on what is cyclical and what is structural. Prime-age and young workers are those who remain underemployed, while the contribution of older workers to the labour gap is close to zero (Chart 3).
Another measure we use is the labour market indicator (LMI), which we started publishing on a regular basis this year. This indicator shows that the overall labour market has more room  2  In the parlance of the 1960s and 1970s, we are seeing a divergence from Okun’s Law, which holds there is a negative statistical relationship between growth and unemployment.