Intended or not, that's implicitly a government-and-union goal: to keep competing workers out of the work force as long as possible.
The govt's been pretty well dedicated to countering and reversing productivity gains through taxes and productivity-killing regulation. That creates more jobs (non-productive ones), and fewer goods. It's kind of like a union's "shop rules."
Increasing productivity--the ability to produce goods and services with less and less labor--is the only reason we've been able to support such a large parasitic load in America. Our tax levels would've starved our ancestors.
-- Cheers, James Arthur