I have only glanced through it, but I like what I see. Previous reports under President Obama I found to be long on cheerleading for the his policies and much shorter on substance than what we used to see. This one appears to represent a return to substance. Greg Mankiw points out the way in which the report hints that the median household income has been hurt more by slow growth than by increased inequality.

I give the authors credit for putting a lot of focus on labor force participation trends. They write,

Overall, the most important factor affecting the aggregate participation rate in the recession and recovery has been the aging of the population. But there are a number of important trends and developments relevant for understanding the changes in participation of different subgroups of the population:
• Increased participation by older Americans, which may be attributable to an increase in skills among this population and also to changes in Social Security retirement benefits;
• Reduced participation by younger Americans as they stay in school longer;
• Continuation of an at least 65-year long trend of declining male labor force participation, which is especially stark for young minority men; and
• Tapering of the long-term trend of increasing female labor force participation, which dates back to before World War II.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think much of the policy recommendations in the report. I also think that if you are looking for clues to declining labor force participation, you should pay some attention to the high implicit marginal tax rates faced by people who are eligible for food stamps and other government benefits. As regular readers will remember, I favor replacing the hodge-podge of means-tested programs, including Medicaid, with a single cash grant that tapers off gradually as income rises (I would suggest that the implicit marginal tax rate be limited to something like 20 or 25 percent).