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Discussion Paper
Director's Welcome
The new Center for Workforce and Economic Opportunity will focus on employment and labor market issues. Director Stuart Andreason discusses the center's objectives in this post.
Discussion Paper
Opportunity Occupations: Well-Paying Jobs for Middle-Skill Workers
Did you know that only 29.7 percent of Americans over the age of 25 have attained a four-year college degree? Given many policymakers' focus on increasing the share of individuals who attain a degree, that may sound like a surprisingly low number. It leaves a large group of American workers who do not have a four-year degree and lack the means or desire to obtain one in the current labor market. In fact, "middle-skill" Americans, defined as those who have obtained their high school diploma but not a four-year college degree, comprise some 57 percent of the country's total population of those ...
Discussion Paper
Career Pathways in a Changing Labor Market
Recently, labor economists, workforce development policy analysts, and workforce development practitioners gathered at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta to examine the effects of automation and shifting labor demands on the future of work. Presenters included Dan Restuccia of Burning Glass Technologies, Sara Lamback of Jobs for the Future, Daniel Kreisman of Georgia State University, Chad Shearer of the Brookings Institution, Susan Lund of McKinsey Global Institute, and Nancey Green Leigh and Ben Kraft of Georgia Institute of Technology. The researchers collected data from job postings, ...
Discussion Paper
Racial Disparities in the Labor Market
Current research tells us that racial gaps in wages, employment, and labor participation have widened over recent decades. Many factors contribute to these disparities, including difficult to measure dynamics like discrimination, criminal conviction history, and skills gaps.
Discussion Paper
Creating Opportunities for Young Workers
Integrating young workers into the workforce, especially opportunity youth, takes a deliberate approach. Considering the needs and perspectives of young workers is critical to integrating them into the workforce. Involving young adults and opportunity youth in the design and development of programs and curricula that prepare them for work will help ensure that the programs address challenges young workers face in the labor market. Creating opportunities for early work experience also plays an important role.
Discussion Paper
Hiring Difficulties across Industries and Location
In the current tight labor market with low levels of unemployment, it is not surprising that a large share of firms experience difficulty hiring candidates for open positions. However, much is unclear about the extent of these difficulties, their underlying reasons, and how firms respond. Using data from the Federal Reserve Banks' national 2017 Small Business Credit Survey, a recent paper examines the nature of firms' hiring difficulties and how they vary by industry and geographic location. The paper also explores how the reasons behind hiring difficulties relate to firms' responses. The ...
Discussion Paper
Policies to Close the Southern Skills Gap
Southern states have a number of economic and demographic characteristics that make them unique from the rest of the country—and increase the need to build skills to advance economic development in the region.
Discussion Paper
Early Childhood Education and the Economy
A child's first few years provide a strong foundation for future development. Early childhood education programs can increase future labor force productivity, decrease societal costs, and ultimately lead to a stronger economy.
Discussion Paper
Promising Workforce Development Approaches
On November 9, 2018, at the New York Fed, three expert panels discussed promising approaches to investing in workforce development as part of the launch of the three-volume book Investing in America’s Workforce: Improving Outcomes for Workers and Employers. Read highlights from the discussions below.
Discussion Paper
Automation and the Future of Work
There are numerous reports that highlight potential effects that new technology will have on the U.S. labor market, and many of them are not exactly what you would expect. For example, with the advent of the internet and ubiquity of spreadsheets in the 1980s, analyst employment soared. The new technology unlocked latent demand for more analysis that had been simply too expensive before the new communication and productivity technologies became common. The need for more analysis led to more analysts…even though there were new technologies that made the work more efficient or productive.