second they suggest that a nonnegligible share of inactive workers that is either receiving benefits that are conditional to inactivity or is too sick too addicted too uneducated to work or disconnected from the labour market or even just too poor to access available jobs will not easily join the labour force despite the tight labour market several measures of regional dispersion applied to oecd data on participation by states and counties show an increase over past three decades especially for men for instance the gap in participation between the bottom counties and the top has increased by about percentage points on average since the gap in participation between the bottom states and the top has increased by about percentage points on average and by percentage points for males