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Journal Article
Men’s Falling Labor Force Participation across Generations
The labor force participation rate for prime-age men has been declining for decades. About 14% of millennial males at age 25 are not in the labor force, compared with 7% of baby boomer males when they were that age. This generational gap declines substantially as groups approach middle age; the decline reflects that younger millennials enrolled in postsecondary education at higher rates and moved into the workforce later than prior generations. The convergence for millennial males suggests that the trend of men’s higher nonparticipation rates may slow in the future.
Working Paper
Explaining Stagnation in the College Wage Premium
After growing substantially during the 1980s through the early 2000s, the college wage premium more recently has been largely unchanged, or stagnant. We extend the canonical production-function model of skill premiums to assess supply and demand contributions to the slowdown in the college wage premium, using annual CPS ASEC data from the early 1960s through 2023. To account for the rising importance of women in the college educated workforce, we estimate a hybrid model that incorporates components that are disaggregated by age and gender. We also allow for non-linearities and changes over ...
Journal Article
How Quickly Do Prices Respond to Monetary Policy?
With inflation still above the Federal Reserve’s 2% objective, there is renewed interest in understanding how quickly federal funds rate hikes typically affect inflation. Beyond monetary policy’s well-known lagged effect on the economy overall, new analysis highlights that not all prices respond with the same strength or speed. Results suggest that inflation for the most responsive categories of goods and services has come down substantially from recent highs, likely due in part to more restrictive monetary policy. As a result, the contributions of these categories to overall inflation ...
Journal Article
Comparing Measures of Housing Inflation
Measuring the price of shelter for homeowners is difficult, even when housing markets are stable. A new measure of shelter price inflation uses mortgage, tax, and insurance payments, rather than the implied rental value of homes used in the consumer price index (CPI). The payments method suggests year-over-year shelter price inflation rose 4.3% nationally in July, compared with the CPI’s 5.8% estimate. Conditions in rental markets likely explain this difference. Comparing the varying results nationally and across regions highlights the challenge of accurately measuring the shelter inflation ...
Working Paper
Cyclical and market determinants of involuntary part-time employment
We examine the determinants of involuntary part-time employment, focusing on variation associated with the business cycle and variation attributable to more persistent structural features of the labor market. Our theoretical framework distinguishes between workers? decision to seek part-time work and employer demand for part-time work hours, emphasizing demand and supply determinants of involuntary part-time work such as workplace technology, labor costs, and workforce demographics. We conduct regression analyses using state-level panel and individual data for the years 2003-2014. The results ...
Journal Article
Wildfires and Real Estate Values in California
Wildfires have been a concern in California for decades. The intensity of these events has increased recently, with particularly large and destructive fire seasons between 2018 and 2021. Analysis shows that distance from high fire-risk zones had little impact on residential housing values in the past. However, that has changed since the late 2010s, coinciding with more extensive fire damage to land and structures across the state. Insurance availability appears to help little in preserving home values in areas that are considered more at risk.
Journal Article
What’s behind the increase in part-time work?
Part-time work spiked during the recent recession and has stayed stubbornly high, raising concerns that elevated part-time employment represents a ?new normal? in the labor market. However, recent movements and current levels of part-time work are largely within historical norms, despite increases for selected demographic groups, such as prime-age workers with a high-school degree or less. In that respect, the continued high incidence of part-time work likely reflects a slow labor market recovery and does not portend permanent changes in the proportion of part-time jobs.
Journal Article
Is it still worth going to college?
Earning a four-year college degree remains a worthwhile investment for the average student. Data from U.S. workers show that the benefits of college in terms of higher earnings far outweigh the costs of a degree, measured as tuition plus wages lost while attending school. The average college graduate paying annual tuition of about $20,000 can recoup the costs of schooling by age 40. After that, the difference between earnings continues such that the average college graduate earns over $800,000 more than the average high school graduate by retirement age.
Journal Article
How Do Periods of Inflation, Recession Affect Real Earnings?
Households can lose spending power if they suffer job losses during recessions or when the cost of living rises at times of high inflation. One way to assess the historical roles these two factors have played in eroding economy-wide earnings is by breaking down the cumulative growth in inflation-adjusted household earnings into three components: nominal earnings growth, inflation, and employment growth. Analyzing the results suggests that periods of high inflation may undermine economy-wide real earnings growth more than mild recessions.
Working Paper
Pulled Out or Pushed Out? Declining Male Labor Force Participation
The fraction of men working in the United States has declined consistently since the 1950s. This has contributed to slower labor force growth and resulted in considerable gaps between labor force participation in the U.S. and its industrialized peers. In this paper we examine the drivers of this trend, focusing specifically on prime-age men (aged 25–54). We compare non-participation rates across four generations – the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials – and decompose generational gaps into “push” and “pull” factors that are intended to be ...