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Report
Redefining the labor market. SF Fed economists Rob Valletta, Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau, and Mary C. Daly share their thoughts on the U.S. labor market with fellow economist President John Williams
Changes in demographics, and in employer and worker needs, have redefined the U.S. labor market. We discuss the "new normal" in our 2015 annual report, What We've Learned?and why it matters. Observations include how the gig economy?or sharing economy?is affecting the part-time workforce. We also look at influences on labor force participation rates and clarify the math behind sluggish wage growth. A consideration for both is the retirement of higher-earning baby boomers and the increase in steady employment for lower-wage workers.
Journal Article
Reducing Inflation along a Nonlinear Phillips Curve
Inflation has climbed since 2021, as the labor market has tightened. Two historical data relationships can account for elevated inflation over the past two years: the Beveridge curve, which relates job vacancies and unemployment rates over the business cycle, and a nonlinear version of the Phillips curve, which links inflation to labor market slack. Combining estimates of the two curves implies that inflation can fall in conjunction with a “soft landing” for the economy if labor market easing is achieved mainly by reducing job vacancies rather than increasing unemployment.
Journal Article
Breakeven Employment Growth
Employment growth has consistently come in above pre-pandemic estimates of the rate needed for unemployment to stay near its long-run natural rate. Even so, unemployment has held steady, which raises the question of whether the “breakeven” employment growth rate has changed. In the short-run, recent surges in immigration and labor force participation have caused the current breakeven employment growth rate to rise as high as 230,000 jobs per month. However, the long-run breakeven employment growth rate appears unchanged, ranging around 70,000 to 90,000 jobs per month.
Working Paper
UI Generosity and Job Acceptance: Effects of the 2020 CARES Act
To provide economic relief following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. CARES Act granted an extra $600 per week in unemployment insurance (UI) benefit payments from late March through July 2020. This unprecedented increase in UI generosity caused weekly benefit payments to exceed prior earnings for most recipients, raising concern that many would be unwilling to accept job offers, slowing the labor market recovery. To assess the impact of the UI supplement, we analyze the job acceptance decision in a dynamic framework in which job seekers weigh the value of a job against remaining ...
Working Paper
Disentangling goods, labor, and credit market frictions in three European economies
We build a flexible model with search frictions in three markets: credit, labor, and goods markets. We then apply this model (called CLG) to three different economies: a flexible, finance-driven economy (the UK), an economy with wage moderation (Germany), and an economy with structural rigidities (Spain). In the three countries, goods and credit market frictions play a dominant role in entry costs and account for 75% to 85% of total entry costs. In the goods market, adverse supply shocks are amplified through their propagation to the demand side, as they also imply income losses for ...
Working Paper
Parents in a Pandemic Labor Market
Gender gaps in labor market outcomes during the pandemic are largely due to differences across parents: Employment and labor force participation fell much less for fathers as compared to women and non-parent men at the onset of the pandemic; the recovery has been more pronounced for men and women without children, and; the labor force participation rate of mothers has resumed declining following the start of the school year. The latter is partially offset in states with limited school re-openings. Evidence suggests flexibility in setting work schedules offsets some of the adverse impact of ...
Journal Article
Finding a Soft Landing along the Beveridge Curve
As U.S. economic growth slows this year, a key question is whether job openings can fall from historical highs without a substantial rise in unemployment. Analyzing the current Beveridge curve relationship between unemployment and job openings presents a meaningful possibility that labor market pressures can ease and achieve a “soft landing” with only a limited increase in unemployment. This view is supported by high rates of job matching in the U.S. labor market in 2022, despite ongoing employment reallocation across industries.
Journal Article
To Retire or Keep Working after a Pandemic?
Workers age 55 and older left the labor force in large numbers following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Four years later, participation within this age group has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, despite the strongest labor market in decades. This has resulted in an estimated shortfall of nearly 2 million workers. Analysis shows that the participation shortfall is concentrated among workers in this age group without a college degree and can be explained by increased and growing retirement rates for this group, above pre-pandemic trends.
Working Paper
Reservation Benefits: Assessing job acceptance impacts of increased UI payments
Job acceptance decisions weigh the value of an entire job spell relative to remaining unemployed. There exists a reservation level of benefit payments in this dynamic decision problem at which an individual is indifferent between accepting and refusing an offer. This reservation benefit is a simple statistic to test the job acceptance deterrence effects of current unemployment insurance (UI) payments, summarizing the decision problem conditional on the believed state of the labor market and the weeks of UI compensation remaining. Estimating the reservation benefit for a wide range of US ...
Journal Article
Finding a Soft Landing along the Beveridge Curve
As U.S. economic growth slows this year, a key question is whether job openings can fall from historical highs without a substantial rise in unemployment. Analyzing the current Beveridge curve relationship between unemployment and job openings presents a meaningful possibility that labor market pressures can ease and achieve a “soft landing” with only a limited increase in unemployment. This view is supported by high rates of job matching in the U.S. labor market in 2022, despite ongoing employment reallocation across industries.