No, since, as you say, that is normally covered by an employment drug test. But to get welfare? Absolutely.
When you are used to making 90k a year as a senior accountant, and then have to go to work at SuperValu as a cashier for minimum wage, is it not a good thing for either the person OR the economy.
My only argument against the LFPR is that it is easy to manipulate and doesn't factor in a changing workforce demographic. To me, the retirement age should be 60. We keep arbitrarily changing it for political reasons. So we have a rapidly retiring baby boomer population, many of whom aren't waiting till 65 to retire, and until they are 65 they are counted as unemployed by the LFPR. That just isn't a reliable stat. In times of economic prosperity that allows younger retirement, the LFPR would suggest a recession. U6 is the only thing that really matters to Joe America.
To get welfare agreed, but if you can't pass a drug test to get a job, why am I paying your unemployment benefits.
This type of situation is mostly accounted for in the stats. There are reports of average work week in hours and average hourly earnings. The bigger issue is people who want work but cannot find it.
The LFPR claims it does not count retired persons no matter what the age. So I'm having trouble with your argument.
Well, I'm not certain that I trust their ability to determine what portion of people 55-65 are voluntarily retired and still working just to stay active. Anyway, we can drop that aspect and only consider the student and female demographics. Recessions dramatically effect the flow of students and females into and out of the workforce. It is much harder for the LFPR to paint an accurate employment situation as a headline number. During a recession, as household income drops, more students and housewives enter the workforce at the very time that there are fewer jobs to go around resulting in a massive LFPR drop. This suggests a much bleaker picture than is actually the case. The opposite is true during expansion.