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Journal Article
BLS Benchmark Revisions: Is This Time Different?
In this Economic Commentary, we discuss the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) payroll benchmark revisions, the role of these revisions, BLS methodology, and recent time series. While we do see some large benchmark revisions in recent years, these revisions are not big enough to indicate that something structural about the series has changed. Finally, considering a time series from 2010 through 2025, we find that past benchmark revisions have information that may help predict future revisions.
Journal Article
Wage Growth after the Great Recession
Nominal wage growth since the Great Recession has been sluggish. We show that the sluggishness is due mostly to weak growth in labor productivity, as well as lower-than-expected inflation. We also find that wage growth since late 2014 has actually been above what would be consistent with realized labor-productivity growth and inflation, and this trend in wages reflects an increase in labor?s share of income. We show evidence that this increase in the labor share may be due to a reversal of the trend to replace labor with capital.
Journal Article
The Evolution of the Labor Share across Developed Countries
In most developed countries, the share of output accruing to labor has declined over the last 20 years. However, the underlying reasons for the decrease may have differed in the United States and other developed countries. In this Commentary, we examine some of the explanations economists have proposed for the decline in the labor share and discuss how well these explanations account for the decline across developed countries.
Journal Article
Do Foreign-Born Workers Cause Native-Born Workers to Move or Leave the Labor Force?
This Commentary discusses how the presence of foreign-born workers in a local labor market affects the decisions of native-born workers to leave the labor force or move to another state. We analyze short panels obtained through the Current Population Survey and find that, in the short run, less-educated native-born workers react to a larger stock of foreign-born workers by either moving to a different state or dropping out of the labor force. In terms of magnitude, the effect is small but not insignificant.
Journal Article
Revisiting Wage Growth after the Recession
In this Commentary, we show that realized wage growth since 2015 has mostly been at a rate that would be expected given observed rates of inflation and labor productivity growth. Moreover, labor productivity growth has been in line with its potential over the same period. This picture of the post-recession recovery of wages is very different from the one we observed in an earlier analysis, when all we had were data up through the end of 2015. The reasons underlying the difference are large revisions in labor productivity data and upticks in the inflation rate and labor productivity growth ...
Journal Article
The 1918 Flu and COVID-19 Pandemics: Different Patients, Different Economy
Many observers seeking historical precedent for COVID-19 draw on the 1918 influenza pandemic. In this Commentary, we highlight the differences between the 1918 flu and COVID-19 pandemics in terms of the most significantly affected populations. We also show key differences in the US economy in the late 1910s and now. Not only did the 1918 influenza virus primarily affect significantly younger cohorts, but the US economy’s industry and geographic distributions were notably different at the time compared to today’s. Consequently, caution is needed when using the 1918 influenza pandemic as a ...
Journal Article
How Sure Can We Be about a COVID-19 Test Result if the Tests Are Not Perfectly Accurate?
In this Commentary, we show how the interpretation of test results is affected by a test’s reliability rate. Moreover, we discuss how test fallibility may affect the use of tests as a tool to curb the spread of a disease. In particular, we show how administering inexpensive and less precise tests that can be conducted multiple times may be a more efficient way of curbing the pandemic than administering expensive more precise tests once.
Journal Article
US Labor Market after COVID-19: An Interim Report
Headline numbers have shown that the US labor market has recovered the jobs lost during the pandemic. Nevertheless, there is significant variation in the recovery across states and counties and across occupations and industries. Using the available data from the monthly Current Population Survey and the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ State and Metro Area Employment, Hours, and Earnings for January 2019 to August 2022, we present the changing patterns in the labor market. We also highlight some possible underlying reasons that are correlated with the varying patterns across groups and space. ...
Journal Article
Excess Savings and Consumer Behavior: Excess Compared to What?
How much accumulated savings do households hold, and what do these savings imply about future consumption? Economists typically consider excess savings when gauging the level of savings that households may use to maintain real consumption as costs rise. Economists have estimated strikingly different levels of currently held excess savings. We highlight the differences between measures of counterfactual savings—that is, the amount of savings households would be expected to hold barring unusual events—and their relevance in computing post pandemic excess savings. Furthermore, we show that, ...
Journal Article
Technology Adoption and the Changing Role and Background of Clerical Workers
From 1980 through 2015, the share of clerical jobs in the employed labor force declined more significantly in large and expensive cities than in smaller cities. Moreover, the remaining workers performing these occupations in large and expensive cities had, on average, higher education levels and were more likely to perform tasks usually done by managerial and professional personnel when compared to their small-city counterparts. In this Economic Commentary, we show how these patterns are related to the uneven adoption of information communication technologies (ICT) across geographies and ...