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Working Paper
The Effect of COVID Immigration Restrictions on Post-Pandemic Labor Market Tightness
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there were unprecedented shortfalls in immigration. Concurrently, as the economy recovered, the labor market became tight, with the number of vacancies per unemployed worker reaching two, more than twice its pre-pandemic average. In this article, we investigate whether these two trends are connected. We find no evidence to support the hypothesis that the immigration shortfalls caused the tight labor market, for two main reasons. First, while the immigration deficit peaked at about two million workers, this number had largely recovered by February 2022, just as ...
Working Paper
Where Did the Workers Go? The Effect of COVID Immigration Restrictions on Post-Pandemic Labor Market Tightness
During the COVID pandemic there were unprecedented shortfalls in immigration. At the same time, during the economic recovery, the labor market was tight, with the number of vacancies per unemployed worker reaching 2.5, more than twice its pre-pandemic average. In this paper, we investigate whether these two trends are linked. We do not find evidence to support the hypothesis that the immigration shortfalls caused the tight labor market for two reasons. First, at the peak, we were missing about 2 million immigrant workers, but this number had largely recovered by February 2022 just as the ...
Journal Article
Where Are Labor Markets the Tightest? A Tale of the 100 Largest US Cities
How does labor market tightness vary across the US, and how have labor markets changed since the pandemic? The vacancy-to-unemployment ratio is a common measure.
Journal Article
What’s the Best Measure of Economic Slack?
Different ways of measuring the economy’s unused capacity, or slack, can result in varying inflation forecasts. Estimates suggest that direct measures of labor market tightness, such as the ratio of job vacancies to unemployment or the rate of employee job switching, provide more accurate forecasts than commonly used measures, such as the unemployment rate or the output gap. Recent elevated values of these measures of labor market tightness suggest greater inflation pressure than is implied by the unemployment rate alone.
Working Paper
Excess Persistence in Employment of Disadvantaged Workers
We examine persistence in employment-to-population ratios in excess of that implied by persistence in aggregate labor market conditions, among less-educated individuals using state-level data for the United States. Dynamic panel regressions and local projections indicate a moderate degree of excess persistence, which dissipates within three years. We find no significant asymmetry between the excess persistence of high vs. low employment rates. The cumulative effect of excess persistence in the business cycle surrounding the 2001 recession was mildly positive, while the effect in the cycle ...
Journal Article
A State-Level Look at U.S. Labor Market Supply and Demand
Variations in labor market tightness across the U.S. at the end of 2022 appear to have been caused primarily by whether job openings were rising or falling.
Journal Article
The Effect of COVID-19 Immigration Restrictions on Post-Pandemic Labor Market Tightness
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there were unprecedented shortfalls in immigration. Concurrently, as the economy recovered, the labor market became tight, with the number of vacancies per unemployed worker reaching two, more than twice its pre-pandemic average. In this article, we investigate whether these two trends are connected. We find no evidence to support the hypothesis that the immigration shortfalls caused the tight labor market, for two main reasons. First, while the immigration deficit peaked at about two million workers, this number had largely recovered by February 2022, just as ...
Can Earnings Calls Be Used to Gauge Labor Market Tightness?
An index that uses textual analysis of earnings calls to track labor issues appears to be highly correlated to one measure of labor market tightness.
Journal Article
Despite a Tight Labor Market, Job Opportunities Lag for Eighth District Out-of-School Young Adults
Out-of-school young adults in the Eighth District have made employment gains in a tight labor market but continue to encounter barriers to finding jobs.
Discussion Paper
Pandemic Wage Pressures
The recovery since the onset of the pandemic has been characterized by a tight labor market and rising nominal wage growth. In this post, we look at labor market conditions from a more granular, sectoral point of view focusing on data covering the nine major industries. This breakdown is motivated by the exceptionality of the pandemic episode, the way it has asymmetrically affected sectors of the economy, and by the possibility of exploiting sectoral heterogeneities to understand the drivers of recent labor market dynamics. We document that wage pressures are highest in the sectors with the ...