By the  BIS Review 43/2004  3  time more-sober assessments of the profitability of the high-tech sector came to the fore, huge sums of money had been sunk into capital equipment and software and into new enterprises. A serious reconsideration of these expenditures contributed to a sharp retrenchment of business investment.
If the cyclical component is abnormally large, relative to the unemployment rate, then it might be seen as an additional contributor to labor market slack. Labor force participation peaked in early 2000, so its decline began well before the Great Recession. A portion of that decline clearly relates to the aging of the baby boom generation.