The labor
force participation rate has fallen due to
cyclical factors such as workers temporarily dropping out of the workforce
because of discouragement over job prospects, but also due to structural
forces such as the Baby Boomers reaching retirement age and younger workers staying in school longer.
For more on the terrestrial foods topic, see my detailed discussion in this previous post, and this recent (March 30) ScienceNews report on yet another, largely anecdotal «polar bears resort to bird eggs
because of declining sea ice» story (see photo below, based on a new paper by Prop and colleagues), which was also covered March 31 at the DailyMail («Polar bears are
forced to raid seabird nests as Arctic sea ice melts — eating more than 200 eggs in two hours,» with lots of hand - wringing and sea ice hype but little mention of the fact that there are many more bears now than there were in the early 1970s around Svalbard or that the variable,
cyclical, AMO (not global warming) has had the largest impact on sea ice conditions in the Barents Sea).