Search Results
Report
Labor market exit and re-entry: is the United States poised for a rebound in the labor force participation rate?
The U.S. labor force participation rate has declined sharply since 2007?far faster than can be explained by demographic shifts in the population. This brief analyzes the re-entry probability for individuals who exit the labor force as well as the financial demographic, and employment characteristics of these individuals. The vast majority of individuals under 45 years of age re-enter the labor market within four years of exiting; however, the re-entry rate drops substantially for 50?54 year-olds and 55?59 year-olds. Those individuals who exit the labor market appear more marginally attached ...
Report
Household formation over time: evidence from two cohorts of young adults
Residential investment accounts for an important component of U.S. gross domestic product, and traditionally plays a strong role in business cycle expansions. U.S. residential investment has improved slowly during the recovery from the Great Recession, despite a relatively strong national rebound in house prices and record low interest rates. An important determinant of residential investment is the household formation rate, which is largely driven by young adults moving out of their parents? homes after completing high school or college. New household formation can be offset when existing ...
Report
Sectoral inflation and the Phillips curve: what has changed since the Great Recession?
Using sectoral data at a medium level of aggregation, we find that price changes became less responsive to aggregate unemployment around 2009?2010. The slopes of the disaggregated Phillips curves diminished in many sectors, including housing and some services. We also document a decrease in sectoral inflation persistence, suggesting an increase in the weight of the forward-looking inflation expectation component and a decrease in the weight of the backward-looking component.
Report
The Roles of Mobility and Masks in the Spread of COVID-19
This policy brief analyzes the effects of COVID-19 mitigation policies, those that restrict movement and activity and those that advocate public health best practices. The analysis uses US state-level data to estimate the effects of mobility, mask mandates, and compliance with these mandates on the numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths. A one-standard-deviation increase in mobility is associated with an 11 to 20 basis points greater rate of growth in case counts; a mask mandate can offset about half of this increase. Slower growth in case counts ultimately translates into slower growth in ...
Report
COVID-19 and the Labor Market Outcomes for Prime-Aged Women
This paper documents labor market outcomes for prime-aged women relative to those for prime-aged men since the COVID-19 pandemic officially started. The pandemic-induced recession has played out very differently compared with previous recessions, with women initially losing jobs at higher rates than men. While the pandemic has been hard for everybody, it has resulted in a widening of the gender gaps in employment and labor force participation of roughly 2 percentage points. The gaps grew initially due to occupation distribution differences across genders as well as school closings. Women ...
Report
Population Aging and the US Labor Force Participation Rate
The labor force participation rate dropped sharply at the beginning of the pandemic, and as of November 2021 it had recovered only about half of its lost ground. The failure of the participation rate to get closer to its level immediately before the pandemic has puzzled many analysts. In this note, we show that the current participation rate is much less puzzling if one compares it with participation in November 2017 (the last time the unemployment rate was at its current level of 4.2 percent), rather than February 2020 (immediately before the pandemic). Since November 2017, population aging ...
Working Paper
House prices and risk sharing
We show that homeowners are able to maintain a high level of consumption following job loss or disability in periods of rising house values. However, the consumption drop for consumers who simultaneously lose their job and equity in their houses is substantial. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we verify that homeowners smooth consumption more than renters, and that consumption smoothing improves when houses appreciate in the area of residence. We calibrate and simulate a model of endogenous homeownership and home-equity loans, and show that the model is able to reproduce ...
Briefing
Recent Trends in Vermont Childcare: A Decrease in Capacity, Increases in Cost and Quality, and Policy Responses
For many parents, particularly mothers, the availability and affordability of paid childcare determines whether they can formally participate in the workforce. Studies show that because mothers traditionally bear a larger share of childcare responsibilities, their labor market participation rate is disproportionally affected by childcare considerations. This Regional Brief focuses on childcare capacity in Vermont, specifically on state-licensed childcare for children under school age. It studies how the capacity has changed in the last decade and how those changes have affected the cost and ...
Working Paper
Consumption, credit, and the missing young
There are more young adults today with either no credit history or insufficient credit history to be scored by one of the major credit bureaus than there were before the Great Recession ? a reality that is likely an unintended outcome of the CARD Act of 2009. In regressions that include a rich set of controls, this paper shows that measures of young adults missing from credit bureau data act as a drag on state-level consumption growth. This finding seems to be driven by young individuals from more disadvantaged backgrounds having less access to credit since the act went into effect.
Working Paper
The local aggregate effects of minimum wage increases
This paper examines the effect of minimum wage changes on local aggregate inflation and consumption growth. The paper utilizes variation in state-level minimum wages across locations and finds that minimum wage increases have a relatively modest effect on both city-level inflation and spending growth over the years following the change. The most noticeable effects are for food consumed at home and away from home?industries that typically employ a large share of low-wage and minimum-wage workers. Interestingly, consumers adjust their real food consumption when minimum wages rise, suggesting ...