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Discussion Paper
The Persistent Urban Shortfall in Leisure and Hospitality Employment
As a high-contact service sector with limited capacity for remote work, the US leisure and hospitality sector—which includes restaurants, bars, hotels, museums, and movie theaters—was hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first two months of the pandemic, leisure and hospitality lost over 8 million jobs, nearly half its employment (Figure 1, solid red line).
Working Paper
Harmonized Population and Labor Force Statistics
The official labor force statistics often exhibit discontinuities in January, when updated population estimates are incorporated into the Current Population Survey (CPS) for the current year but are not revised backward through history. We construct harmonized population estimates spanning five decades and produce new weights for the CPS microdata that are benchmarked to these estimates. Using these weights, we estimate harmonized labor force statistics that reflect the latest available information about the population and its characteristics. The harmonized labor force series are free from ...
Discussion Paper
Labor force growth, breakeven employment, and potential GDP growth
Labor force growth has been slowing and could be near-zero starting this year, driven by weak population growth reflecting low net immigration and by declining labor force participation reflecting population aging. Such weak growth in the labor force is unprecedented in the United States' recent history. In this note we highlight two significant implications of near-zero labor force growth: First, near-zero labor force growth implies that breakeven employment growth (i.e. the pace needed to maintain a steady unemployment rate) would also be near-zero—making negative job growth almost as ...