Search Results
Briefing
Public and Private Labor Market Data: Insights From the Government Shutdown
Private and public data are complements, not substitutes: Private sources offer speed and granularity, while government surveys provide representative benchmarks.Different data sources can measure similar but subtlety different things. For instance, JOLTS, ADP, RPLS and Gusto all measure "employment" but define it in different ways.These differences can lead to very different measurements, illustrated by two private data sources diverging by 100,000 jobs during the shutdown.
Briefing
The Shortcomings of a Work-Biased Welfare System
The recently passed American Rescue Plan Act has once again brought attention to the U.S. welfare system. This EB provides an overview of the welfare system — including recent changes — and assesses the system's effectiveness in achieving its goals. The brief highlights a "work bias" that is embedded in many U.S. welfare programs and has both intended and unintended effects on the system's ability to combat poverty.
Briefing
Career Progressions and Wage Growth: Is There a One-Size-Fits-All Job Ladder?
Differences in earnings across workers are large and become larger as workers age. In this article, we explore the contribution of different career dynamics to the earnings gap between poorer and richer workers. We emphasize how poorer workers do not lack opportunities to change jobs, as they have high job mobility rates. Thus, they potentially could work at increasingly better-paying firms but seldom do so in practice. Indeed, despite many job changes, wages and employer quality are stagnant over the life cycle for poorer workers. We discuss this finding in light of previous economic ...
Briefing
A Look at the Impact of the Work-From-Home Revolution
In this article, I survey the state of remote work in the American economy and investigate the implications for workers, businesses and local economies. Comprehensive real-time survey data agree: Work from home is here to stay. The ability to offer remote or hybrid arrangements has become an important tool for employers to attract and retain talent, as workers value the flexibility that working from home affords them. Meanwhile, what has been a positive development to many workers poses significant challenges for urban cores that no longer benefit from the daily influx of commuters and their ...
Briefing
Business Cycles: Is the Current Economic Environment Different?
Post-1988 unemployment cycles are significantly longer than earlier ones: 18.4 months for pre-1988 cycles, and 30 months for post-1988.The current cycle has been especially gradual, with unemployment rising steadily for 33 months — the longest on record without a recession following.In particular, the current cycle is atypical in that the sustained increase in unemployment occurs while GDP growth is, instead, strongly positive.
Briefing
Career Progressions and Wage Growth: Decreasing the Gap Between Richer and Poorer Workers
In our previous article, we explored the contribution of different career dynamics to the earnings gap between poorer and richer workers. We emphasized how poorer workers do not lack opportunities to change jobs, as they have high job mobility rates. Thus, they potentially could work at increasingly better-paying firms but seldom do so in practice. Looking at previous economic literature — including a leading framework for the labor market: the job ladder model — we argued that postulating a common job ladder for both poorer and richer workers is not supported by the data. In this ...
Briefing
Do Federal Layoffs Have Ripple Effects on Local Economies?
We investigate the extent to which low-skill job openings have accompanied reductions in the federal workforce.As of May 31, 2025, we find small effects.Our findings suggest that the local demand channel identified in the economic literature — whereby high-skill jobs sustain low-skill ones via high-skill workers' demand for nontradable goods and services — is rather muted so far for federal jobs.
Briefing
Human Capital Investment: Would Higher-Order Skills Help Disconnected Youth?
Human capital investments remain cost-effective well into young adulthood.A multidimensional approach to human capital development emphasizes developing self-reflection abilities and strategic thinking skills alongside traditional academic knowledge.Higher-order skills — like teamwork, critical thinking and self-control — offer high returns for disconnected youth and are well-compensated in the labor market.
Working Paper
Minority Inflation, Unemployment, and Monetary Policy
Our paper addresses the heterogeneous effects of monetary policy on households of different races. The cyclical volatility of real income differs significantly for households of different races and income levels, reflecting differential exposure to fluctuations in employment and consumer prices. All Black households are disproportionately affected by employment fluctuations, whereas price volatility is only particularly pronounced for Black households with income above the national median. The latter face 40 percent higher price volatility than both poorer households of the same race and ...
Briefing
How Domestic Outsourcing Affects the Labor Market
In this article, I focus on a few ways domestic outsourcing affects our understanding of the labor market. Jobs filled and emptied by temporary workers are never included in the official tally of job creation and job destruction, which leads to significantly underestimating the magnitude of labor market flows. Domestic outsourcing also changes the interpretation of firm reactions to productivity changes, as well as the magnitude and meaning of a secular decline in measures of labor market dynamism such as the job reallocation rate. Outsourcing is important for plants in modifying their ...