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Journal Article
Do labor market activities help predict inflation?
The authors conduct an empirical analysis of the role of labor market activities in inflation and conclude that wage growth is not very informative for predicting price inflation. But price inflation does seem to help predict wage growth.
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Small Business Employment in the Pandemic Era and Beyond
In this article, we study the creation of small firms, with a focus on the post-March 2020 period (i.e., after the start of the global Covid-19 pandemic).1 We document the increase in new small firms, as well as the contributions of small firms to employment growth, during this period. Our analysis shows that, despite the increase in the number of small businesses, the share of employees working for small firms is considerably lower than in large businesses and is, in fact, declining.
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Changing Labor Force Composition and the Natural Rate of Unemployment
This article discusses why changes in the composition of the labor force may have lowered the natural (or trend) rate of unemployment?the unemployment rate that would prevail in an economy making full use of its productive resources?to 5 percent or less. A lower natural rate may help explain why wage inflation and price inflation remain low despite actual unemployment recently reaching 5.5 percent?a figure only slightly above prominent estimates of the natural rate, such as that of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Demographic and other changes should continue to lower the natural rate ...
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How much of the decline in unemployment is due to the exhaustion of unemployment benefits?
Prior studies have examined the impact of extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefits on the rise in the unemployment rate in this recession and early recovery. We use real-time microdata from the Bureau of Labor Statistics? Current Population Survey (CPS) to examine whether there has been a reverse effect recently as benefits have been exhausted. We find that if UI benefits had lasted indefinitely, the unemployment rate would have been cumulatively about 0.1 to 0.3 percentage points higher between October 2009 and January 2011, which represents about 10% to 25% of the decline in the actual ...
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Explaining the decline in the U.S. labor force participation rate
The authors conclude that just under half of the post-1999 decline in the U.S. labor force participation rate, or LFPR (the proportion of the working-age population that is employed or unemployed and seeking work), can be explained by long-running demographic patterns, such as the retirement of baby boomers. These patterns are expected to continue, offsetting LFPR improvements due to economic recovery.
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How Health Insurance Improves Financial Health
Low-income Americans who became eligible to enroll in Medicaid due to the Affordable Care Act saw their medical debt cut in half.
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How Much Did the Minimum Wage Drive Real Wage Growth During the Late 2010s?
For much of the recent expansion, real wage growth was surprisingly sluggish, by some measures never reaching its pace prior to the 2008 financial crisis, despite tight labor markets that drove the unemployment rate to 3.5%. However, on average, the lowest-earning workers fared substantially better, consistently experiencing real wage growth of 6% or more for much of the late 2010s, a pace well above the previous two decades.
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Did Covid-19 disproportionately affect mothers’ labor market activity?
School and day care center restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic have presented enormous challenges to parents trying to juggle work with child-care responsibilities. Still, empirical evidence on the impact of pandemic-related child-care constraints on the labor market outcomes of working parents is somewhat mixed. Some studies suggest the pandemic had no additional impact on the labor supply of parents, while other studies show not only that it did but that the negative impact was disproportionately borne by working mothers.
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Explaining Variation in Real Wage Growth Over the Recent Expansion
In August 2019 the unemployment rate was roughly 1 percentage point below the Congressional Budget Office?s (CBO) estimate of its long-run or natural rate, nearly matching the unemployment rate gap that developed during the historically tight labor market of the late 1990s. Nevertheless, real wage growth remains well below its pace of the late 1990s and even that of the milder 2000s expansion.
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Unit Labor Costs and Inflation in the Non-Housing Service Sector
Inflation remains high, and it is critical to understand the components of inflation. Inflation in core goods has declined over much of the past year. Inflation in housing services remains high, but the growth in rental rates of units available for rent has fallen in recent months. This suggests measured inflation in housing services, which includes rents on both occupied and vacant units, is likely to moderate over the coming year as rents on occupied units catch up to those of vacant units.