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Report
Population Aging and the US Labor Force Participation Rate
The labor force participation rate dropped sharply at the beginning of the pandemic, and as of November 2021 it had recovered only about half of its lost ground. The failure of the participation rate to get closer to its level immediately before the pandemic has puzzled many analysts. In this note, we show that the current participation rate is much less puzzling if one compares it with participation in November 2017 (the last time the unemployment rate was at its current level of 4.2 percent), rather than February 2020 (immediately before the pandemic). Since November 2017, population aging ...
Journal Article
How Aware Is the Public of Labor Market Conditions?
Consumers’ perceptions of labor market conditions have historically aligned closely with the unemployment rate. However, the two diverged during the pandemic, when the unemployment rate spiked while people’s views of the labor market remained more positive. This raises the question of whether public perceptions around the labor market have become untethered from the data. Measuring labor market conditions using the jobless unemployment rate, which excludes temporary layoffs, suggests this is not the case: the historical link between people’s perceptions and measured labor market ...
Journal Article
Unemployment Insurance Withdrawal
Unemployment insurance benefits were expanded substantially to help overcome the pandemic labor market shock in early 2020. However, improved labor market conditions in early 2021 prompted many states to withdraw from the enhanced unemployment benefits programs several months before the federal program was scheduled to end in early September. A comparison of states that ended enhanced benefits early with those that maintained them suggests that the withdrawal is associated with a small pickup in employer hiring, consistent with prior studies that found the unemployment benefit expansions had ...
Journal Article
Labor Market Conditions Have Eased, but Why? A State-Level View
An analysis examines how changes in labor supply and labor demand contributed to loosening state and national job market conditions in 2023.