Search Results
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.
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 ...
The Beveridge Curve's Predictive Power: Why Job Vacancy Types Matter for Monetary Policy
An analysis looks at the sharp rise in job vacancies since 2010 and what it means for using the Beveridge curve to assess labor market tightness.
Working Paper
Local Labor Market Tightness and Job Quality: Evidence from Job Changers
Using novel data from the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, we examine how labor market tightness affects workers’ job quality. We estimate that a 10 percent increase in job vacancies not only increases the probability of changing jobs, it yields an 11–18 percent increase in the (unconditional) probability of switching to a better job overall, and one with greater pay and benefits, interest in the work, and advancement opportunities. Because tight labor markets improve both worker pay and job amenities in roughly the same proportion, their benefits to workers are ...
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
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.
Journal Article
Labor Market Tightness after the COVID-19 Recession: Differences across Industries
Industries that contributed most to rising U.S. labor market tightness after the COVID-19 recession had large individual increases and high employment shares.
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.
Working Paper
Hysteresis in Employment among Disadvantaged Workers
We examine hysteresis in employment-to-population ratios among less-educated men using state-level data. Results from dynamic panel regressions indicate a moderate degree of hysteresis: The effects of past employment rates on subsequent employment rates can be substantial but essentially dissipate within three years. This finding is robust to a number of variations. We find no substantial asymmetry in the persistence of high vs. low employment rates. The cumulative effect of hysteresis in the business cycle surrounding the 2001 recession was mildly positive, while the effect in the cycle ...
Discussion Paper
Measuring Labor Market Tightness: Data Update and New Web Feature
Good measures of labor market tightness are essential to predict wage inflation and to calibrate monetary policy. In an October 2024 post, we introduced a new indicator of labor market tightness and showed that it tracked wage inflation best out of a broad range of tightness measures. In this post, we update our index through 2025 and show that it also forecasts future wage inflation best both in and out of sample. In addition, we highlight availability of the index as a new regularly updated feature on the New York Fed’s website.