Labor Markets
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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 surrounding the 2008-09 recession was decidedly negative. Simulations suggest that the lasting employment benefits of temporarily running a “high-pressure” economy are small. Read More
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Goods-Market Frictions and International Trade
We add goods-market frictions to a general equilibrium dynamic model with heterogeneous exporting producers and identical importing retailers. Our tractable framework leads to endogenously unmatched producers, which attenuate welfare responses to foreign shocks but increase the trade elasticity relative to a model without search costs. Search frictions are quantitatively important in our calibration, attenuating welfare responses to tariffs by 40 percent and increasing the trade elasticity by 50 percent. Eliminating search costs raises welfare by 1 percent and increasing them by only a few dollars has the same effects on welfare and trade flows as a 10 percent tariff. Read More
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Firms, Skills, and Wage Inequality
We present a model with search frictions and heterogeneous agents that allows us to decompose the overall increase in US wage inequality in the last 30 years into its within- and between-firm and skill components. We calibrate the model to evaluate how much of the overall rise in wage inequality and its components is explained by different channels. Output distribution per firm-skill pair more than accounts for the observed increase over this period. Parametric identification implies that the worker-specific component is responsible for 85 percent of this, compared to 15 percent that is attributable to firm-level productivity shifts. Read More
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Opioids and the Labor Market
This paper studies the relationship between local opioid prescription rates and labor market outcomes. We improve the joint measurement of labor market outcomes and prescription rates in the rural areas where nearly 30 percent of the US population lives. We find that increasing the local prescription rate by 10 percent decreases the prime-age employment rate by 0.50 percentage points for men and 0.17 percentage points for women. This effect is larger for white men with less than a BA (0.70 percentage points) and largest for minority men with less than a BA (1.01 percentage points). Geography is an obstacle to giving a causal interpretation to these results, especially since they were estimated in the midst of a large recession and recovery that generated considerable cross-sectional variation in local economic performance. We show that our results are not sensitive to most approaches to controlling for places experiencing either contemporaneous labor market shocks or persistently weak labor market conditions. We also present evidence on reverse causality, finding that a short-term unemployment shock did not increase the share of people abusing prescription opioids. Our estimates imply that prescription opioids can account for 44 percent of the realized national decrease in men’s labor force participation between 2001 and 2015. Read More
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The Unintended Consequences of Employer Credit Check Bans for Labor Markets
Over the last decade, 11 states have restricted employers’ access to the credit reports of job applicants. We document a significant decline in county-level vacancies after these laws were enacted: Job postings fall by 5.5 percent in affected occupations relative to exempt occupations in the same county and the same occupation nationwide. Cross-sectional heterogeneity in the estimated effects suggests that employers use credit reports as signals: Vacancies fall more in counties with a large share of subprime residents, while they fall less in occupations with other commonly available signals. Read More
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Job Heterogeneity and Aggregate Labor Market Fluctuations
This paper disciplines a model with search over match quality using microeconomic evidence on worker mobility patterns and wage dynamics. In addition to capturing these individual data, the model provides an explanation for aggregate labor market patterns. Poor match quality among first jobs implies large fluctuations in unemployment due to a responsive job destruction margin. Endogenous job destruction generates a burst of layoffs at the onset of a recession and, together with on-the-job search, generates a negative comovement between unemployment and vacancies. A significant job ladder, consistent with the empirical wage dispersion, provides ample scope for the propagation of vacancies and unemployment. Read More
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Rival Growth Prospects and Equity Prices: Evidence from Mass Layoff Announcements
We investigate the impact of mass layoff announcements on the equity value of industry rivals. When a layoff announcement conveys good (bad) news for the announcer, rivals on average witness a 0.44 percent increase (0.60 percent decrease) in cumulative abnormal stock returns. This effect is concentrated on rivals with high growth opportunities. Consistent with this finding, we also show that our results are strongest in technology industries, where growth opportunities matter the most. Our results suggest that investors perceive layoff announcements as news about industry prospects rather than just the announcer. Read More
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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. Read More
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Parental Assistance after Job Loss
We have previously shown that young adults who live near their parents experience faster earnings recoveries after a job loss than young adults who live farther from their parents. In this analysis, we present evidence that demonstrates the relationship is causal; that is, there is something about living close to one’s parents that enables one to find another job that pays as well as the one lost. We also explore what type of parental help might be driving the relationship and find that it is possibly the provision of childcare and access to job networks, but likely not help with housing expenses. Read More
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Opioids and the Labor Market (2018 version)
This paper finds evidence that opioid availability decreases labor force participation while a large labor market shock does not influence the share of opioid abusers. We first identify the effect of availability on participation using the geographic variation in opioid prescription rates. We use a combination of the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) county-level prescription data to examine labor market patterns across both rural and metropolitan areas of the United States from 2007 to 2016. Individuals in areas with higher prescription rates are less likely to participate after accounting for standard demographic factors and regional controls. This relationship remains significant for important demographic groups when increasingly strong panel data controls, including a full set of geographic fixed effects and measures of local labor market conditions in 2000, are introduced to the regressions. We also investigate the possibility of reverse causality, using the Great Recession as an instrument to identify the effect of weak labor demand on opioid abuse. The share abusing opioids did not increase after the onset of the Great Recession. The evidence on the frequency of abuse is more ambiguous since the identified increases could be the continuation of a pre-trend. Read More
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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 surrounding the 2008–09 recession was, through 2016, decidedly negative. Additional simulations suggest that the employment benefits of temporarily running a “high-pressure” economy are small. Read More
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Labor Market Tightness across the United States since the Great Recession
Though labor market statistics are often reported and discussed at the national level, conditions can vary quite a bit across individual states. We explore differences in these labor market conditions across US states before and after the Great Recession using a ratio of the number of unemployed workers to job vacancies. We show that the intensity of the adverse effects of the recession and the strength of the recovery varied geographically at all points in the process. We also demonstrate that wage growth is delayed until the ratio of unemployed workers to job vacancies returns to prerecession levels. Read More
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The Unintended Consequences of Employer Credit Check Bans on Labor and Credit Markets
Since the Great Recession, 11 states have restricted employers' access to the credit reports of job applicants. We document that county-level vacancies decline between 9.5 percent and 12.4 percent after states enact these laws. Vacancies decline significantly in affected occupations but remain constant in those that are exempt, and the decline is larger in counties with many subprime residents. Furthermore, subprime borrowers fall behind on more debt payments and reduce credit inquiries postban. The evidence suggests that, counter to their intent, employer credit check bans disrupt labor and credit markets, especially for subprime workers. Read More
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Parental Proximity and Earnings after Job Displacements
Young adults, ages 25 to 35, who live in the same neighborhoods as their parents experience stronger earnings recoveries after a job displacement than those who live farther away. This result is driven by smaller on-impact wage reductions and sharper recoveries in both hours and wages. We show that geographic mobility, different job search durations, housing transfers, and ex-ante differences between individuals are unlikely explanations. Our findings are consistent with a framework in which some individuals living near their parents face a better wage-offer distribution, though we find no direct evidence of parental network effects. Read More
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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. Read More
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The Unintended Consequences of Employer Credit Check Bans on Labor and Credit Markets
We document that county-level job vacancies decline between 9.5 and 12.4 percent after states enact laws that restrict employers' access to the credit reports of job applicants. The evidence suggests that, counter to their intent, employer credit-check bans disrupt labor and credit markets, especially for workers who are subprime borrowers. Read More
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The Opioid Epidemic and the Labor Market
Drug overdoses now account for more deaths in the United States than traffic deaths or suicides, and most of the increase in overdose deaths since 2010 can be attributed to opioids--a class of drugs that includes both prescription pain relievers and illegal narcotics. We look at trends in drug use and overdose deaths to document how the opioid epidemic has evolved over time and to determine whether it could be large enough to impact the labor force. Read More
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What’s Gone Wrong (and Right) in the Industrial Heartland?
The historically Midwestern manufacturing region, sometimes referred to as the "Rust Belt," faced another challenging period after 2000 when manufacturing employment declined by 1.2 million jobs. This Commentary investigates the relative economic performance of this region versus other US metropolitan areas during and following these job losses. The analysis shows that while unemployment rates have recovered in the metro areas of the industrial heartland, other economic indicators lag behind the manufacturing-intensive metro areas outside of the region. Read More
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Measuring the True Impact of Job Loss on Future Earnings
The effect of job displacement on future earnings losses has often been calculated by comparing the earnings of individuals who suffer a displacement at some point in their career with the earnings of those who never lose a job. I show this approach leads to an overstatement of the earnings losses following displacement and discuss an alternative that can ascertain the true effects of displacement in some instances. Read More
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Choosing a Control Group for Displaced Workers
The vast majority of studies on the earnings of displaced workers use a control group of never-displaced workers to examine the effects of initial displacements. This approach attributes earnings declines due to all future job instability to the initial displacement event, overstating the losses relative to the average treatment effect. This paper’s approach isolates the impact of an average displacement without conditioning on future displacement status in the control group. In comparisons of the standard and alternative approaches using PSID data, the estimated long-run earnings losses fall dramatically from 25 percent to as low as 5 percent. Read More
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Organizations, Skills, and Wage Inequality
We extend an on-the-job search framework in order to allow firms to hire workers with different skills and skills to interact with firms' total factor productivity (TFP). Our model implies that more productive firms are larger, pay higher wages, and hire more workers at all skill levels and proportionately more at higher skill types, matching key stylized facts. Read More
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Parental Proximity and the Earnings Consequences of Job Loss
We find post-job-loss earnings recovery is faster for young adults who live near their parents than for young adults who live farther away. This positive effect diminishes gradually as the distance to one’s parents increases. Most of the effect is driven by higher wages after job displacement, not by differences in the number of hours worked. The effect is not present for older workers, who may be caring for elderly parents. Read More
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The State of States’ Unemployment in the Fourth District
Evaluating what constitutes a "normal" level for the unemployment rate is an important issue for policymakers, who need to assess how close the economy is to full employment. We introduce a framework that enables us to calculate the normal unemployment rate for each of the four states in the Fourth District and compare that rate to the national normal rate. We conclude that these states and the District as a whole have very little labor market slack left from the Great Recession. Read More
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The Economic Outlook and Monetary Policy
Loretta J. Mester, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland-Greater Cleveland Partnership Middle-Market Forum, Cleveland, OH-September 28, 2016 Read More
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The Ins and Outs of Self-Employment: An Estimate of Business Cycle and Trend Effects
We examine quarterly microlevel data on labor market transitions taken from the Current Population Survey from 1990 to 2014 to estimate how the business cycle affects transitions into and out of self-employment from other labor market states. Read More
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Trends in Employment at US Colleges and Universities, 1987–2013
This article studies employment at colleges and universities in the United States between 1987 and 2013. Read More
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State of the State: Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania’s employment growth in 2015 trailed the national growth rate, something likely driven by energy-related job losses and demographic trends. Read More
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Choosing a Control Group for Displaced Workers
This paper takes a new approach to estimating the effect of job displacement on earnings by choosing a control group that does not require continuous employment. Read More
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Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity in the United States during and after the Great Recession
We use establishment-level data from a nationally representative establishment-based compensation survey collected by the BLS to investigate the extent to which downward nominal wage rigidity is present in US labor markets. Read More
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Student Employment and Time Use
What are the effects of employment on students' academic and labor market outcomes? We begin to explore the issue by comparing the amount of time that employed and unemployed students spend on homework and other activities. Read More
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Market, Nonmarket, and Total Work of Males and Females
In this article we investigate the time use patterns of employed males and females. We look at market work and nonmarket work, first separately, and then together. Read More
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Are America’s Inner Cities Competitive? Evidence from the 2000s
We investigate the competitiveness of inner cities in terms of employment between 2002 and 2011 and find that inner cities are gaining jobs. Read More
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The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies across OECD Countries
We show the inability of a standardly calibrated labor search-and-matching model to account for observed levels of labor market volatility. Read More
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Slow Capital Accumulation and the Decline in Labor’s Share of Output
Since capital and labor tend to be complementary in the production of goods and services, the same factors that have slowed down capital accumulation since the early 2000s may have weakened businesses' labor demand and may have decreased the labor share. Read More
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A State-Level Analysis of Okun’s Law
In this paper, we estimate Okun’s coefficients for each U.S. state and examine the potential factors that explain the heterogeneity of the estimated Okun relationships. Read More
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Labor Market Behavior during and after the Great Recession: Has It Been Unusual?
What’s been unusual about the recovery from the Great Recession is not the behavior of the labor market, but rather, the anemic growth of GDP. Read More
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Job Ladders and Earnings of Displaced Workers
Using a model of search over match-quality with a significant job ladder, this paper proposes an explanation for the empirical puzzle of workers who suffer job displacement experiencing large and persistent earnings losses. Read More
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Are Wages Flat or Falling? Decomposing Recent Changes in the Average Wage Provides an Answer
There recently has been a lot of concern about stagnant wages. This article answers the question: What fraction of recent changes in the average wage is due to changes in the occupation mix versus changes in wages within occupations? Read More
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Are America's Inner Cities Competitive? Evidence from the 2000s
We investigate the competitiveness of inner cities in terms of employment between 2002 and 2011 and find that inner cities are gaining jobs. Read More
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Job Polarization and Labor Market Transitions
In this post, we want to shed some light on the unemployment experience of workers with different occupational skills and their transitions into different states of employment or unemployment. Read More
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Lessons for Forecasting Unemployment in the U.S.: Use Flow Rates, Mind the Trend
This paper evaluates the ability of autoregressive models, professional forecasters, and models that leverage unemployment flows to forecast the unemployment rate. Read More
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Assessing the Change in Labor Market Conditions
This paper describes a dynamic factor model of 19 U.S. labor market indicators. Read More
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Employment Trends in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania's unemployment rate was 5.7 percent in September. Read More
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Reassessing the Effects of Extending Unemployment Insurance Benefits
To deal with the high level of unemployment during the Great Recession, lawmakers extended the availability of unemployment benefits-all the way to 99 weeks in the states where unemployment was highest. Read More
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Slow Recovery in Wages and Salaries Continues despite Strong Jobs Growth
After enduring the worst recession since the Great Depression, Americans have been finding jobs at an increasing rate. Meanwhile, wage and salary growth has fallen in every sector except goods-producing. Read More
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Unemployment Flows, Participation, and the Natural Rate for Turkey
This paper measures flow rates into and out of unemployment for Turkey and uses them to estimate the unemployment rate trend, that is, the unemployment rate to which the economy converges in the long run. Read More
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How Much Slack Is in the Labor Market? That Depends on What You Mean by Slack
Estimates of labor market slack can diverge a great deal depending on how slack is defined. Read More
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Reassessing the Beveridge Curve “Shift” Four Years Later
Early on in the current recovery, people were worried about a potential shift in the Beveridge curve-an empirical relationship between job openings and unemployment. With 16 more quarters of data, we see there is no shift. Read More
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Labor Force Participation: Recent Developments and Future Prospects
Since 2007, the labor force participation rate has fallen from about 66 percent to about 63 percent. We use a variety of approaches to assess reasons for the decline in participation. Read More
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The Shifting Source of New Business Establishments and New Jobs
New business establishments can be created by entrepreneurs opening new firms or by existing businesses opening new locations. We show that over the past 3 decades, new establishments have increasingly been provided by existing. Read More
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Job Search Before and After the Great Recession
We compared the amount of time that unemployed workers spent searching for a job before and after the Great Recession to see if we could find evidence of rising levels of discouraged workers. Read More
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State Unemployment Insurance Policy Responses during the Great Recession
During the Great Recession, state unemployment insurance systems faced unequal burdens depending on how well their accounts within the federal Unemployment Trust Fund (UTF) were funded and how severely they were hit by the recession. Read More
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Why Do Earnings Fall with Job Displacement?
The earnings of workers are reduced for many years after being displaced from their jobs, and those workers and their families face increased risk of other problems as well. Read More
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Job Polarization and the Great Recession
Jobs that involve predominantly routine tasks are being replaced by technology, while jobs that involve abstract tasks have gained ground. Jobs dominated by manual tasks have held their ground. Read More
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Annual Revisions to Pittsburgh Jobs Data Alter Picture of Local Labor Market
Initial employment statistics for states and metro areas can change significantly after the annual benchmarking process. The latest revisions offer a case in point for the Pittsburgh metro area. Read More
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Annual Revisions to Metro-Level Jobs Data Sheds New Light on Job Growth
Initial employment statistics for metropolitan areas are very preliminary. The benchmarked data released annually are far more accurate. Read More
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Which Estimates of Metropolitan-Area Jobs Growth Should We Trust?
The earliest available source of metro-area employment numbers is the initial estimates of State and Metro-Area Employment, Hours, and Earnings (SAE) from the Current Employment Statistics program, but these figures are subject to large revisions. Read More
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How Fast Will Labor Productivity Grow in the Long Run?
Forecasting the long-run growth of labor productivity helps to determine the long-run growth rates of wages, per-capita income, and aggregate output. Various forecasts suggest the growth rate lies between 1.63 percent and 2.05 percent. Read More
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Is a Neighborhood’s Unemployment Rate Influenced by its Metro Area?
We looked at unemployment and income data by neighborhood in the 100 largest US metro areas to see if we could identify any factors that help explain differences in employment conditions that are observed within metro areas. Read More
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Employee Compensation Costs During the Recovery
The Federal Reserve's two mandates-to keep inflation under control and to promote employment growth-overlap when it comes to employee compensation. Read More
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The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies across OECD Countries
We show the inability of a standardly calibrated labor search-and-matching model to account for observed levels of labor market volatility. Read More
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Taking Stock of the Labor Market Recovery
A number of factors are putting the pace of labor market improvements on center stage for many financial market observers. Read More
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Differences in Employment Growth across Metropolitan Areas
In the last decade, different metropolitan areas of the United States have experienced dramatically different levels of employment growth. Read More
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Underemployment, College Graduates, and the Recession
The exceptionally high unemployment rate of recent years indicates that the U.S. workforce has been persistently underutilized. With fewer individuals working than would otherwise be, or those with jobs working fewer hours than they would prefer ... Read More
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Employment Growth Slows in Ohio
Employment in Ohio has grown 2.7 percent since the start of the recovery (June 2009 to March 2013). Over the same period, national employment grew almost a percentage point more. Read More
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Government Spending and Employment in Recoveries
After steadily increasing for a decade, government spending and employment began to reverse course halfway into 2010. We are now almost four years into the recovery, and neither has returned to levels typical of past recoveries. Read More
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Educational Attainment and Demographic Differences in Employment
It is well-known that employment outcomes such as unemployment rates and employment-to-population ratios vary markedly across demographic groups. Differences in unemployment rates are especially pronounced across age and racial groups. Read More
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The State of the U.S. Labor Market Recovery
It has been five years since the beginning of the Great Recession, and the labor market recovery, while far from great, has been steady. Nevertheless, we are still more than 3 million jobs short of the pre-recession level. Read More
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Are We Like Sweden? Recovery in the Labor Market
More than 20 years ago Sweden suffered a severe financial crisis that brought unemployment to an all-time high. Read More
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Exports from the Fourth District States
In the Fourth District states of Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, exports make a significant contribution to the economy. Read More
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Employment in Education and Healthcare Services
Last month’s employment report showed continued modest expansion in payrolls for the month of December, with the economy adding 155,000 jobs. This is right on the monthly average for the entire year, which stands at 153,000 new jobs per month. Read More
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Changes in District Employment Are Closely Following the U.S. Average
At the national level, the Labor Department tracks employment using two different surveys. One survey asks business establishments how many people they employ, while the other asks households how many individuals in the home have jobs. Read More
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The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies across OECD Countries
We show the inability of a standardly calibrated labor search-and-matching model to account for observed levels of labor market volatility. Read More
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The Labor Market: Then and Now
While the third-quarter's real GDP growth rate of 2.7 percent was an improvement over the second quarter's 1.3 percent, it may turn out to be the best in a lackluster year. Read More
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A Decade of Hard Times in Places that Rely on Manufacturing Employment
While the fraction of people employed in the manufacturing sector has declined greatly in the United States over time, manufacturing still makes up a large fraction of employment in some parts of the country. Read More
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Market Sectors and the Decline in Average Hours Worked
Since the 1960s, the average number of hours worked has been decreasing in the U.S. Read More
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Moonlighting
For some workers, one job isn't enough. Read More
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The Ins and Outs of Unemployment in the Long Run: Unemployment Flows and the Natural Rate
This paper proposes an empirical method for estimating a long-run trend for the unemployment rate that is grounded in the modern theory of unemployment. Read More
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Displaced Workers and the Great Recession
The Great Recession lasted six quarters and as we all know, it took a large toll on the labor market. Read More
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Regional Differences in Science and Engineering Schooling and Employment
Differences in human capital across regions are associated with differences in economic performance. Read More
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Labor’s Declining Share of Income and Rising Inequality
Labor income has been declining as a share of total income earned in the United States for the past three decades. Read More
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The Great Recession’s Impact on Hours Worked and Employment
Employers can respond to the economy by hiring, not hiring, or firing employees, as well as by choosing the hours worked by employees. Read More
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The College Wage Premium
The return on educational investments has risen substantially in the past 30 years. Read More
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Beyond the Unemployment Rate: Long-term Unemployment
The unemployment rate has been above 8 percent since February 2009, the longest stretch since the 1950s. Read More
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Re-Examining the Role of Sticky Wages in the U.S. Great Contraction: A Multisectoral Approach
We quantify the role of contractionary monetary shocks and wage rigidities in the U.S. Great Contraction. Read More
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Search Frictions and the Labor Wedge
We show that search frictions embedded in an RBC model primarily manifest themselves at the extensive margin. Read More
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Fourth District Labor Markets: Cleveland's Puzzling Data
The labor markets of different regions have not all recovered from the Great Recession at the same rate. Read More
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An Unstable Okun’s Law, Not the Best Rule of Thumb
Okun's law is a statistical relationship between unemployment and GDP that is widely used as a rule of thumb for assessing the unemployment rate. Read More
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Technology Shocks and Unemployment in the Last Recession
In the latest recession, unemployment rates in the United States increased at a faster pace than in the average OECD country. Read More
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Weekly Hours Worked: Another Recession Casualty
Many aspects of the labor market have yet to return to their pre-recession levels in the economic recovery. Read More
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Measuring Small Business Employment over the Business Cycle
Many analysts have tried to understand why the pace of job growth has been so slow since the end of the Great Recession. Read More
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10 Things to Know About the Shape of Ohio's Skilled Workforce
A region's economic performance is closely linked to the skills and knowledge of its workforce. Read More
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Labor Markets: Glass Half Empty…Glass Half Empty
The April 2012 employment report offered a mixed bag of results. Read More
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Diagnosing Labor Market Search Models: A Multiple-Shock Approach
We construct a multiple shock, discrete time version of the Mortensen-Pissarides labor market search model to investigate the basic model’s well-known tendency to underpredict the volatility of key labor market variables. Read More
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Income Growth in the Fourth District Since 1970
For the 100 largest U.S. metro areas in 1970, two factors explain almost a third of the variation in median household income growth over the subsequent 40 years. Read More
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An Elusive Relation between Unemployment and GDP Growth: Okun’s Law
The unemployment rate fell from 9.1 percent to 8.3 in 2011, but real GDP grew only 1.6 percent. That is much lower than its average growth of 2.6 percent since 1985. Read More
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Starting Off on the Wrong Foot: Early Careers and High Unemployment
Younger workers typically face a higher rate of unemployment than older workers, and after the last recession, the gap has only grown wider. Read More
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Job Creation by Small and Large Firms over the Business Cycle
The Great Recession caused establishments of all sizes to make significant cuts in their employment. Read More
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Behind the Decline in Labor’s Share of Income
Labor income, which includes wages, salaries, and benefits, has been declining as a share of total income earned in the U.S. Here, we look at the cyclical and long-run factors behind this development. Read More
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Some Improvement in the Labor Market
The labor market closed out 2011 on a solid note, with employment gains in the month of December at 200,000 and the unemployment rate declining to 8.5 percent. Read More
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Pittsburgh’s Labor Market in the Recession and Recovery
Over the course of the recent business cycle, labor markets within the Fourth District have experienced distinctly different patterns of contraction and expansion. Read More
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Emergency Unemployment Compensation and Long-term Unemployment
The recent recession was the longest on record since the Depression. Read More
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Local Government Employment in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and West Virginia
In the past year, policymakers in the Fourth District and across the nation have focused tremendous attention on local government employees. Read More
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Incomes Are Down, Poverty Is Up
According to the latest Census Bureau data, real median income dropped from about $50,600 in 2009 to about $49,500 in 2010. Read More
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This Time May Not Be That Different: Labor Markets, the Great Recession and the (Not So Great) Recovery
The last three U.S. recessions have been followed by "jobless recoveries." The lack of robust job growth once GDP starts to pick up has a lot people asking if labor markets have changed in some fundamental way. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate has continued to increase over the summer months from a low of 8.5 percent in April to a current reading of 8.8 percent for July. Read More
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Treading Water
August’s employment report showed that the labor market is treading water. Read More
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Unemployment, Labor Costs, and Recessions: Implications for the Inflation Outlook
Economists have been arguing about the connection between unemployment and inflation for decades. Read More
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Labor Market not So Anomalous After All
July’s employment report was welcome news, especially after the slowdowns in payroll growth that had occurred over the previous two months. Read More
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Are Underemployed Graduates Displacing Nongraduates?
The current recovery’s failure to produce robust job growth has focused attention on workers who are temporarily getting by in positions that are not good matches. Read More
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Is the U.S. Labor Market Becoming More Sclerotic? And Does It Matter?
The U.S. economy continued to exhibit signs of a painfully slow recovery in the last month. Read More
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Labor Market Rigidity, Unemployment, and the Great Recession
Countries with flexible institutions and labor market policies, like the U.S., experienced increases in unemployment over the course of the Great Recession, while those with relatively rigid institutions and strict labor market policies fared better. Read More
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Manufacturing Hours and Employment in the Recovery
The labor market showed a bit of weakness in May, gaining only 54,000 jobs. This is well below the rate observed since the beginning of the year. The unemployment rate also ticked up by 0.1 percent to 9.1 percent. Read More
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Wages, Expectations, and Prospects for Inflation
Over the past six months, food and energy prices have risen at an annualized rate of 17 percent, prompting speculation of a possible price-wage spiral that will result in rampant inflation. Read More
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What’s Up with the Unemployment Rate?
The unemployment rate jumped back to 9 percent in April, after declining a full 1 percentage point between November 2010 and March. Read More
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Search Frictions and the Labor Wedge
We show that search frictions embedded in an RBC model primarily manifest themselves at the extensive margin. Read More
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Fourth-Quarter GDP Growth and a Look Forward
Real GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2010, originally reported in January as 3.2 percent, settled in at 3.1 percent following the two usual revisions. Read More
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The U.S. Labor Market Experience in a Global Context
The recent recession was felt around the globe. Read More
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Who Is Driving the Decline in the Labor Force Participation Rate?
The employment data released last Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the unemployment rate has fallen by 0.4 percentage point, to 9.0 percent. Read More
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High Unemployment after the Recession: Mostly Cyclical, but Adjusting Slowly
Unemployment has remained very high since the end of last recession, leading some economists to suggest that the underlying trend of the unemployment rate must have risen, driving unemployment permanently higher. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions
Unemployment remains quite high in the nation and higher still in the Fourth District, though it has been nearly 18 months since the recovery began. Read More
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The Ins and Outs of Unemployment in the Long Run: A New Estimate for the Natural Rate?
In this paper, we present a simple, reduced-form model of comovements in real activity and worker flows (job finding and separation). Read More
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Where Are We in the Labor Market Recovery?
The effects of the recent recession have been especially bad for the labor market. Read More
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The Importance of Financial Market Development on the Relationship between Loan Guarantees for SMEs and Local Market Employment Rates
We empirically examine whether a major government intervention in the small-firm credit market yields significantly better results in markets that are less financially developed. Read More
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The Employment Report and Displaced Workers
September’s employment report showed continued anemic employment growth for the U.S. economy. Read More
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The Ins and Outs of Unemployment in the Long Run: A New Estimate for the Natural Rate?
In this paper, we present a simple, reduced-form model of comovements in real activity and worker flows (job finding and separation). Read More
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Job Churning in Regional Labor Markets
A recently developed data source, the U.S. Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) database, is providing new information on the dynamics of U.S. labor markets. Read More
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Compensation and Risk Incentives in Banking and Finance
We review why executive compensation contracts are often structured the way they are, analyze risk incentives stemming from various pay schemes, and examine the tendency of the banking and finance industry toward excessive risk-taking. Read More
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Unemployment after the Recession: A New Natural Rate?
The past recession hit the labor market especially hard, and economists are wondering whether some fundamentals have changed because of that. Many are suggesting that the natural rate of long-term unemployment has shifted permanently higher. Read More
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Has the Beveridge Curve Shifted?
The Beveridge curve is an empirical relationship between job openings (vacancies) and unemployment. Read More
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The Labor Market for Men and Women
Over the course of this recession, men have experienced significantly higher unemployment rates than women. Read More
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Some Popular Locales Now Facing Gloomier Labor Market
While the national employment numbers give the most up-to-date reading of the employment situation in the nation, they mask a lot of variation in employment conditions at the local labor market level. Read More
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Hours and Labor Market Slack
Payroll employment has declined substantially over the course of past two years. Since December 2007, when the most recent recession began, payrolls declined by more than 8.4 million, about 6.1 percent. Read More
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Are Jobless Recoveries the New Norm?
Recent recessions have been followed by exceptionally slow recoveries in the labor market, and the current recession is shaping up to follow the same pattern. Read More
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Ohio’s Labor Market Cycles
Now that it appears that the worst of the “great recession” is over, assessing the damage done to Ohio’s labor market offers insights into what a potential recovery might look like in the state. Read More
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The Employment Situation, January 2010
Nonfarm employment was essentially unchanged in January, declining by just 20,000 jobs, following a downwardly revised loss in December (from 85,000 to 150,000) and an upwardly revised gain in November (from 4,000 to 64,000). Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions
The District’s unemployment rose 0. 1 percent to 10.8 percent for the month of December. Read More
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The Employment Situation, December 2009
Nonfarm payroll employment came in weaker than expected, dropping 85,000 jobs in December to conclude a year totaling nearly 4.2 million net job losses. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions
The District’s unemployment rate remained at 10.7 percent for the month of November. Compared to the national rate, the District’s unemployment rate was 0.7 percentage point higher. Read More
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The Employment Situation
Nonfarm payrolls beat expectations in November, falling just 11,000, the smallest loss in nearly two years. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, October 2009
The District’s unemployment rate jumped 0.7 percentage point to 10.7 percent for the month of October. Read More
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A Multisectoral Approach to the U.S. Great Depression
We quantify the role of contractionary monetary shocks and wage rigidities in the U.S. Great Contraction. Read More
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Job Separations, Heterogeneity, and Earnings Inequality
Changes in the fraction of workers experiencing job separations can account for most of the increase in earnings dispersion that occurred both between, as well as within educational groups in the United States from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Read More
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The Employment Situation, October 2009
Nonfarm payrolls fell by 190,000 jobs in October, coming in slightly below expectations. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, September 2009
The District’s unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage point to 10.0 percent for the month of September. Read More
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Alternative Measures of the Unemployment Rate
The official unemployment rate is one of the most widely reported and closely watched labor statistics, and while it provides insight into the degree to which labor resources are used in the economy, no single statistic can ... Read More
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The Employment Situation, September 2009
Nonfarm payroll losses picked up pace in September, falling by a larger-than-expected 263,000 jobs after a loss of 201,000 in August. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, August 2009
The District’s unemployment rate increased 0.1 percentage point to 10.2 percent for the month of August. Since this time last year, the Fourth District and the national unemployment rates have each increased 3.5 percentage points. Read More
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Pittsburgh’s Labor Market Performance over the Recession
For two days, the leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies will meet to discuss potential reforms to the global economic system. Where will this international meeting take place, you ask? London? New York? Tokyo? Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, July 2009
The District’s unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage point to 10.1 percent for the month of July. An alternative measure of labor market conditions is the U-6 rate, which serves as an estimate for labor underutilization. Read More
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The Incidence and Duration of Unemployment over the Business Cycle
The unemployment rate provides information on the number of people who are unemployed as a fraction of the labor force at any given point in time, but when it rises, it doesn’t tell us much about why. Read More
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The Employment Situation, July 2009
The decline in nonfarm payroll employment slowed to 247,000 in July, and the unemployment rate unexpectedly ticked down by 0.1 percentage point to 9.4 percent in July. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, June 2009
The District’s unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage point to 10.2 percent in June, reflecting decreases in the number of people unemployed (-1.1 percent), the number of people employed (-0.3 percent), and the size of the labor force (-0.1 percent). Read More
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Productivity in the Recession and Going Forward
In contrast to previous postwar recessions that tended to see sharply lower labor productivity growth, if not outright declines, the 2001 and the current recessions have had relatively strong labor productivity growth. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, May 2009
With the national unemployment rate up to 9.5 percent in June, the District’s unemployment rate jumped 0.6 percentage point to 10.3 percent for the month of May. Read More
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The Employment Situation, June 2009
The decline in nonfarm payroll employment picked up pace again in June, as losses were a greater-than-expected 467,000. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, April 2009
The District’s unemployment rate increased 0.4 percentage point to 9.7 percent for the month of April, 0.8 percentage point higher than the nation’s. Read More
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The Employment Situation, May 2009
Employment losses moderated in May, as nonfarm payrolls dropped by 345,000, much less than the average loss of 643,000 of the prior six months. Read More
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The Labor Market in this Downturn: A Historical Comparison
NBER declared December 2007 as the peak of the previous expansion in the U.S. economy (and thus, the start of the current recession). Assuming that we are still in the recession, this downturn will likely be the longest since 1945. Read More
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Regional Labor Market Recessions and Recoveries
What is the recovery of the U.S. labor market expected to look like this time around and will the states follow the same pattern? Overall, Fourth District states have experienced somewhat different labor market cycles in the current recession. Read More
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The Employment Situation, April 2009
The unemployment rate jumped from 8.5 percent to 8.9 percent in April, largely due to a labor force increase of 683,000 people, which pushed up the participation rate 0.3 percentage point to 65.8 percent. Read More
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Involuntary Part-Time Workers and the Deficiencies of the Unemployment Rate
The unemployment rate is often criticized for leaving some people out of the count. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, March 2009
The District’s unemployment rate increased 0.5 percentage point to 9.3 percent for the month of March. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, February 2009
The District’s unemployment rate jumped 0.7 percentage point to 8.8 percent for the month of February. Read More
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The Employment Situation, March 2009
Payroll employment continued its sharp drop in March, declining by 663,000. Revisions left February’s losses unchanged at 651,000, but January’s losses increased to 741,000 (from 655,000 reported last month). Read More
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Employment Loss in Ohio’s Manufacturing Industry
Ohio is often thought of as a state with a relatively large share of economic activity coming from the manufacturing sector, especially heavy manufacturing. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, January 2009
The District’s unemployment rate shot up 0.6 percentage point to 8.1 percent for the month of January. Compared to the national rate in January, the District’s unemployment rate (0.5 percentage point) stood higher, as it has been since early 2004. Read More
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The Employment Situation, February 2009
The labor market lost 651,000 jobs in February, meeting expectations and bringing the total tally of losses since the start of the recession to 4.4 million. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, December 2008
The District’s unemployment rate jumped 0.3 percentage point to 7.4 percent for the month of December (0.2 percentage point higher than the nation’s). Read More
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The Employment Situation, January 2009
The labor market shed 598,000 jobs in January, coming in worse than expected and bringing this downturn’s total losses to 3.6 million. Additionally, the unemployment rate jumped from 7.2 to 7.6 percent, the highest rate since September 1992. Read More
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Ohio’s Local Labor Markets
Since the recession started in December 2007, the U.S. economy has shed 2.5 million jobs, or 1.9 percent of nonfarm payroll employment, and Ohio has reduced its payrolls by 1.6 percent. Read More
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Labor Turnover
The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks the hiring and firing activity of establishments across the nation in its JOLTS series. Read More
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The Employment Situation, December 2008
December employment fell by 524,000, roughly meeting expectations and bringing the year’s total losses to 2.6 million. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, November 2008
The District’s unemployment rate remained steady at 7.0 percent for the month of November. Read More
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Labor Costs
Growth in compensation costs is monitored by economists as an indicator of future inflationary pressures (compensation costs include employers’ costs for wages, salaries, and employee benefits). Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, October 2008
The District’s unemployment rate rose 0.1 percent, reaching 7.0 percent in October. Read More
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The Employment Situation, November 2008
November employment fell by 533,000 in the largest one-month drop since December 1974, coming in far worse than expectations. Read More
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Diagnosing Labor Market Search Models: A Multiple-Shock Approach
We construct a multiple-shock version of the Mortensen-Pissarides labor market search model to investigate the basic model’s well-known tendency to underpredict the volatility of key labor market variables. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, September
The District’s unemployment rate remained steady at 6.9 percent for the month of September. Read More
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The Employment Situation, October 2008
October nonfarm payrolls fell by 240,000, for the tenth straight month of decline this year. October’s decline in payrolls was slightly worse than consensus expectations, which called for losses in the vicinity of 200,000. Read More
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Comparing Current Payroll Employment Changes with Past Recessions
The labor market has now lost jobs for nine straight months, with September’s recent loss of 159,000 being the worst yet of the streak. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, August
The District’s unemployment rate increased 0.2 percent, reaching 6.9 percent for the month of August. July’s rate was also revised upward 0.1 percent. Read More
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The Employment Situation, September 2008
Nonfarm payrolls declined by 159,000 between August and September, with losses spread across a wide range of industries. Read More
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Trend Unemployment and What It Says about Unemployment Patterns
The unemployment rate increased to 6.1 percent in September from 5.7 percent a month earlier. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, July
The district’s unemployment rate jumped up 0.4 percent to 6.6 percent for the month of July. Read More
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The Employment Situation, August
Nonfarm payrolls declined by 84,000 in August, and the unemployment rate rose to 6.1 percent, up from 5.7 percent in July. Read More
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State Labor Markets
Since the start of the credit crisis, labor markets in the 50 states have generally weakened. Read More
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Aggregate Labor Force Participation
The labor force participation rate—the percentage of the working-age population (16 years and older) employed or looking for a job—rode an upward trend for 30 years, rising from less than 60 percent in the 1960s to about 67 percent in the late 1990s. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, June
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate notched up 0.1 percent in June, reaching 6.2 percent. Read More
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The Employment Situation, July
The economy lost a fewer-than-expected 51,000 jobs in July, marking the seventh consecutive month of payroll decline. Read More
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Will We Have Another "Jobless" Recovery?
After the last business cycle peak—still officially March 2001—labor productivity remained strong, but employment took longer than usual to recover. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, May
The district’s unemployment rate jumped 0.6 percent, to 6.1 percent, for the month of May. Read More
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Just When Did the Labor Market Begin to Soften?
While net employment changes are usually tracked as a major indicator of the growth or decline of the economy, these numbers mask the underlying process that begets the net results ... Read More
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The Employment Situation, June
Today’s Employment Report revealed a net decline of 62,000 jobs in June, in line with expectations and identical to May’s 62,000 drop (after revision). Read More
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The Employment Situation, May
Nonfarm payrolls fell for the fifth consecutive month in May, coming in at a slightly smaller-than-expected loss of 49,000. Read More
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Labor Turnover and Employment in Different U.S. Regions
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides labor turnover and vacancy data for four broad census regions and the entire nation as part of its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS). Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, March
The district’s unemployment rate jumped 0.4 percent to 5.7 percent for the month of March. Read More
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Gender Differences in Employment Statistics
One key measure of the condition of an economy’s labor market is the unemployment rate. Read More
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The Employment Situation, April
The April Employment Report came in better than anticipated, with a total loss of just 20,000 nonfarm jobs from payrolls. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, February
The district’s unemployment rate dropped 0.2 percent to 5.3 percent for the month of February, following January’s downward revision to 5.5 percent. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, January
The district’s unemployment rate dropped 0.1 percent to 5.6 percent for the month of January. Read More
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The Employment Situation, March
Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 80,000 in March to 137,846, according to the initial estimate released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) today. Read More
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Does the Recent Trend in Labor Demand Presage Recession?
The number of job openings or vacancies posted by employers constitutes a good measure of unmet labor demand. Read More
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Preliminary Employment Data Might Miss a Recession Onset
As we move further into 2008, concerns are growing about the U.S. economy heading toward recession. Read More
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Labor Force Participation in the United States and Ohio
A key determinant of the size of the labor force is the labor force participation rate. Read More
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The Employment Situation, February
Nonfarm payroll employment declined by 63,000 in February, coming in below expectations of a 25,000 gain. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, December
The district’s unemployment rate jumped 0.5 percent to 5.7 percent for the month of December. Read More
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Positive and Normative Effects of a Minimum Wage
We review the positive and normative effects of a minimum wage in various versions of a search-theoretic model of the labor market. Read More
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The Employment Situation, January
Nonfarm payroll employment declined by 17,000 in January to 138,102. Read More
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Explaining Apparent Changes in the Phillips Curve: The Great Moderation and Monetary Policy
Observations that the Phillips curve may be deviating from historical norms are important to policymakers because deviations would imply that more or less output has to be sacrificed to achieve a permanent reduction in long-term inflation. Read More
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The Ups and Downs in Regional Employment Statistics
Our standard monthly employment report typically provides various employment statistics for the Fourth District and its major metropolitan areas. Read More
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Manufacturing Employment
Manufacturing in the United States has been on the decline since the early 1980s, shedding more than 5½ million jobs over the past three decades. Read More
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The Employment Situation, December
The labor market created a mere 18,000 jobs in December, falling well below expectations, as well as November’s upwardly-revised 115,000 figure. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, October
The district’s unemployment rate remained at 5.7 percent for the month of October. Read More
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Explaining Apparent Changes in the Phillips Curve: Trend Inflation Isn't Constant
Monetary policymakers look to the Phillips curve for information about the cost of actions undertaken to lower inflation. Read More
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The Employment Situation, November
Nonfarm payroll employment grew by 94,000 in November, just slightly below the forecasted gain of 100,000. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, September
The district’s unemployment rate rose to 5.7 percent for the month of September, an increase of 0.2 percentage point. Timothy Dunne, Kyle Fee, Fourth District Employment Conditions, September, 12.07.07 Read More
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Women in the Labor Force
That women’s experience in the labor force has changed in several notable ways over the past few decades is highlighted in a report just published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Beth Mowry, Murat Tasci, Women in the Labor Force, 12.05.07 Read More
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On-the-Job Search and Labor Market Real location
This paper studies amplification of productivity shocks in labor markets through on-the-job-search. Read More
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Diagnosing Labor Market Search Models: A Multiple-Shock Approach
This paper constructs a multiple-shock version of the Mortensen-Pissarides labor market search model to investigate the basic model’s well-known tendency to under predict the volatility of key labor market variables. Read More
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The National Banking System: Empirical Observations
This paper provides a summary of the main features of U.S. financial and banking data during the period of the National Banking System (1863–1914). Read More
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The Employment Situation, October
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 166,000 jobs in October.This is the largest gain since May and doubled market expectations of a gain of 83,000. Read More
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Union Membership
After the National Labor Relations Act became law in 1935, organized labor unions experienced growing popularity and began to exercise their rights to collectively bargain and take part in strikes. Read More
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Coordination Failures in the Labor Market
Can two countries, or two different states, with similar technologies, resources, and policies exhibit differences in labor market performance? Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, August
The district’s unemployment rate remained at 5.5 percent for the month of August, exceeding the national rate by 0.9 percentage point. Read More
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Regional Productivity Growth and Plant-Level Dynamics
The mix of companies in the economy is always changing. The more-productive ones expand, and the less-productive ones are driven out of the market, freeing resources such as labor and capital for new ventures. Read More
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The Employment Situation, September
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 110,000 net jobs in September, the highest net increase since May 2007. Read More
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Labor Turnover
The hiring and firing behavior of establishments across the nation is tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLTS) data. Read More
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Crime and the Labor Market: A Search Model With Optimal Contracts
This paper extends the Pissarides (2000) model of the labor market to include crime and punishment `a la Becker (1968). Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, July
The district’s unemployment rate fell 0.1 percent to 5.5 percent for the month of July. Read More
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Regional Variation in Job Creation and Destruction
As companies and consumers adapt to a changing marketplace, jobs are eliminated and new ones are created. Read More
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The Employment Situation, August
In August, the economy lost jobs for the first time since August 2003. Read More
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Revisions to the Employment Report
When each month’s employment report is released, it contains revisions to the previous two months’ data as well as the latest data. Read More
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Younger Workers and Summertime Employment
Each year before summer begins, a substantial number of high school and college students enters the labor market, as they look for temporary or permanent employment. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, June
The district’s unemployment rate rose to 5.6 percent in June (a 0.2 percent increase over May’s rate). Read More
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The Employment Situation, July
Nonfarm payrolls grew by 92,000 jobs in July—slower than expected and below the average monthly increase reported during the first six months of 2007 (144,000). Read More
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How Do Americans Spend Their Time?
The American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which has been sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau since 2003, provides information about how people in the United States spend their time on an average day 1. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, May
May’s employment report showed relatively stable conditions in the Fourth District’s labor markets. Read More
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The Employment Situation, June
Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 132,000 jobs in June, edging above an average forecast of 128,000. Read More
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Employment and Firm Size over the Business Cycle
Large firms in the United States create and destroy jobs at a slower pace than small firms, but they nevertheless make a large contribution to gross job creation, gross job destruction, and the net change in employment. Read More
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Same numbers, different stories?
The latest data on the economy suggest that it handily weathered the first-quarter storm. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, April
April’s employment report showed slowing conditions in the District’s labor markets. Read More
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Manufacturing Employment
The goods-producing industry lost 19,000 jobs in May, which was traced to weakness in durable goods manufacturing. Read More
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The Employment Situation, May
Nonfarm payroll employment’s May increase of 157,000 was much stronger than expected and higher than the ADP report for May employment (+97,000). Read More
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The Youngest Baby Boomers' Experience in the Labor Market
Having just one job in a lifetime seems to be a thing of the past. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, March
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate rose 0.1 percentage point in March to 5.1 percent. Read More
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The Employment Situation, April
Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 88,000 in April, much lower than the first-quarter average monthly gain of 143,000 jobs and the 2006 average monthly gain of 189,000 jobs. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, February
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate dropped considerably in February 2007 to 5.0 percent. Read More
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Do Workers Benefit from Globalization?
Over the past 50 years or so, advances in transportation and communications, together with a loosening of government barriers to trade and financial flows, have greatly expanded the possibilities for international commerce. Read More
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Employment Flows and Firm Size
In the second quarter of 2006, private business employment grew by 466 thousand jobs. Read More
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The Minimum Wage and the Labor Market
New models of employment show that there are some cases in which a minimum wage can have positive effects on employment and social welfare. Read More
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Labor Costs
Compensation costs, as measured by the Employment Cost Index (ECI), had been rising at a slower pace since early 2005, but since the first quarter of 2006, this slowdown reversed itself. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, January
The Fourth District unemployment rate stayed at 5.4 percent in January 2007, the same as in the previous month. Read More
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The Employment Situation, March
Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 180,000 in March, stronger than predicted (+130,000) after February’s weak report. Read More
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U.S. Ethnic Scientists and Entrepreneurs
Immigrants are exceptionally important for U.S. technology development, accounting for almost half of the country’s Ph.D. workforce in science and engineering. Read More
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Minimum Wage Earners
Minimum-wage workers tend to be young. More than one-half of workers earning the federal minimum or less in 2006 were 25 or younger. Read More
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Construction Activity and Employment
The headline numbers for construction typically focus on residential construction activity. The recent news has not been very good. Read More
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Women in the Workforce
Since Congress designated a week in March to honor women’s history in 1981, women’s contributions to the labor force have changed dramatically. Read More
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The Employment Situation, February
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 97,000 net jobs in February—down from January and lower than the three-month-average increase of 156,000 jobs per month. Read More
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The ADP National Employment Report
Automatic Data Processing (ADP) reports monthly estimates of employment a few days before the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes its Employment Situation. Read More
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Job Creation and Job Destruction
The BLS recently reported that job gains in the second quarter of 2006 totaled 6.9 percent of private sector employment, and job losses came in at 6.5 percent of employment. Read More
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Extended Mass Layoffs
When 50 or more new claims for unemployment benefits are received from one establishment in a given month, government statisticians call it a mass layoff. Read More
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Employment during the Recovery
As business cycles go from expansions to recessions, employment and production mirror their trends. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, December
The Fourth District unemployment rate was up in December, rising to 5.4 percent from 5.2 percent in November. Read More
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The Employment Situation, January
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 110,000 net jobs in January, down from December and about 40,000 lower than expected—a muted start to the year. Read More
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Employment Cost Index
The Employment Cost Index (ECI), which measures the changes in employers’ wage, salary, and benefit costs. Read More
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Job-to-Job Movers
In a given month, a person’s status relative to the labor market can fall in one of three categories: employed (E), unemployed (U) or not in the labor force (N). Read More
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The Employment Situation, December
The December employment data showed far more job growth than most had predicted. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions, November
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate rose from 5.0 percent in October to 5.2 percent in November. Read More
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State Per Capita Personal Income
Of the fifty U.S. states, the one with the highest per capita income in 2005 was Connecticut. Read More
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Labor Turnover
One of the more useful recent additions to the menu of government statistics available to economic analysts is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Turnover Survey Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payrolls grew by 132,000 in November. This moderate increase was accompanied by the Labor Department’s net upward revision of 84,000 jobs for the previous two months. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate was 5.0% in October, down 0.3 percentage point (pp) from the previous month and 0.7 pp from the previous year. Read More
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Labor Costs
Unit labor costs, relatively stagnant since 2002, are showing signs of an upward trend. Read More
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How Wages Change: Micro Evidence from the International Wage Flexibility Project
How do the complex institutions involved in wage setting affect wage changes? Read More
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The Minimum Wage
The federal minimum wage has remained at $5.15 per hour since 1997. At that rate, a full-time worker would make $10,712 per year, about $9,000 below the poverty line for a family of four with no other family income. Read More
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Labor Force Participation
Unemployment rates have fallen during the economy’s recovery from the 2001 recession, partly because increasing numbers of people do not participate in the labor force. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payrolls increased a moderate 92,000 in October, boosted by a net upward revision of 139,000 jobs for August and September. Although October’s increase was below expectations, the 3-month average of 157,000 was in line with the recent trend. Read More
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Labor Force Changes in the Euro Area
The European Central Bank’s October bulletin focuses on the euro area’s changing demographics. As an area becomes more developed, its birthrate begins to decline and life expectancy increases. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate fell 0.5 percentage point (pp) to 5.2% in September. Over the month, employment rose 0.7%, unemployment fell 8.7%, and the labor force increased 0.2%. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payrolls stalled in September, increasing by only 51,000. This weakness was partly offset by an upward revision of 60,000 jobs from the August level of 128,000, but payrolls were still well below expectations. Read More
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Sources of Job Creation
The cover story of the September 25 edition of Business Week highlighted a fact about job creation in the U.S. since March 2001, the beginning of the last recession: Over 1.5 million more jobs were created than lost in health-care industries. Read More
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Gender Differences in the Job Tenure
The September release of data on employee tenure showed few changes since 2000. We show the median number of years a worker 25 or older has been with their current employer. Some studies indicate that longer tenure is associated with higher wages. Read More
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Understanding Unemployment
Modern economists have built models of the labor market, which isolate the market’s key drivers and describe the way these interact to produce particular levels of unemployment. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage point to 5.6% in August. Employment increased 0.1%, unemployment decreased 0.6%, and the labor force grew 0.1% over the month. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 128,000 in August, a number identical to the three-month average of 128,000. Service-producing industries drove the increase, adding 118,000 jobs. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate was 5.7% in July, up from 5.1% a month earlier. Although the District is still below its recent peak of 6.5% in June 2003, the jump of 0.6 percentage point (pp) is its largest one-month increase on record. Read More
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Labor Markets
Employment has grown steadily over the past three months. In July, nonfarm payrolls increased by 113,000, which was less than the average monthly increase for 2005 (165,000), but in line with the 112,000 average monthly gain for 2006:IIQ. Read More
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Job Openings and Labor Turnover
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey measures the number of unfilled jobs, an important component of unmet labor demand. The survey, begun in 2001, provides data on employment, job openings, hires, quits, layoffs, and other separations. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate fell to 5.2% in May, down from 5.5% in April. Over the month, employment increased 0.1%, the number of unemployed people fell 4.7%, and the labor force shrank 0.1%. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll growth was muted in June, showing a net increase of only 121,000 jobs. In 2006:IIQ, payroll growth averaged 108,000 per month, less than the average monthly increase of 169,000 jobs during the previous four quarters. Read More
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Low-Wage Workers
Last year, nearly two million workers, or about 1 1/2% of all wage and salary workers, earned the prevailing federal minimum wage of $5.15 per hour—or less. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate rose from 5.1% in March to 5.5% in April, largely because the estimated number of unemployed rose 8.3%. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll growth was 75,000 in May, the third straight month it slowed. Net job gains in March and April were revised down a combined 37,000, to 175,000 and 126,000, respectively. Read More
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Native- and Foreign-Born Workers
In 2005, foreign-born workers (legally admitted and undocumented immigrants, refugees, and temporary residents) represented about 15% of the labor force, up from about 11% in 1996. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate fell to 5.1% in March from 5.4% a month earlier. Employment in the District was up compared to both February (0.4%) and March 2005 (1.4%). Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll growth was slightly less vigorous in April than earlier this year: Employment increased by 138,000 jobs, less than the expected 200,000 and below the average monthly gain of 171,000 jobs over the previous 12 months. Read More
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Job Openings and Labor Turnover
Since the beginning of 2004, employment growth has been solid: Average monthly payroll gains have reached 170,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate has gone down to 4.7%— the lowest level in nearly four years. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate in February was 5.5%, up from 5.3% a month earlier. Read More
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Productivity Measures
Multifactor productivity (MFP) represents the effects on output growth of many factors, including new technologies, economies of scale, managerial skill, and changes in the organization of production. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payrolls grew by 211,000 jobs in March, surpassing expectations of 190,000. Gains for January and February, however, were revised down by a combined 34,000 jobs. Over the last 12 months, monthly employment growth has averaged 174,000. Read More
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Employment in the Cleveland Metropolitan Area
The Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH, metropolitan statistical area (MSA) had 2.14 million residents in 2003, making it Ohio’s most populous MSA. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
In January, the Fourth District’s unemployment rate was 5.3%. Compared to December, this is muddled because the January estimate reflects an annual revision process that has not yet been incorporated into historical figures. Read More
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Employment Growth, Job Creation, and Job Destruction in Ohio
Over the past several years, Ohio’s employment has grown much more slowly than the national average. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate rose 0.1% in December to 5.9%. In contrast, the U.S. unemployment rate fell from 5.0% to 4.9%. Read More
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Labor Costs
Labor costs account for roughly 70% of firms’ production costs. Read More
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Women in the Workforce
Women’s labor force participation rose from about 43% in 1970 to roughly 59% in December 2005. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payrolls grew by 193,000 in January, reflecting the annual benchmarking process and updated seasonal factors. November’s increase was revised to 354,000 jobs and December's to 140,000. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate remained at 5.8% in November. Over the month, both the number of employed people and the size of the labor force fell 0.1%. Read More
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Understanding the Determinants of Crime
In this paper, we use an overlapping generations model where individuals are allowed to engage in both legitimate market activities and criminal behavior in order to assess the role of certain factors on the property crime rate. Read More
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Unemployment in the Economic Expansion
During the current economic expansion, the unemployment rate has fallen from a peak of 6.3% in June 2003 to 5.0% in November 2005, consistent with rates in the mid-1990s. Read More
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Labor Markets
Job growth was robust in 2005: Payroll employment, having increased by 2.0 million jobs during the year, finally exceeded the level it reached at the peak of the most recent economic expansion, in March 2001. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage point in October to 5.8%. Read More
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Are We Engineering Ourselves Out of Manufacturing Jobs
Since the 1970s, productivity growth in the manufacturing sector has outpaced the overall economy, yet the sector’s share of the workforce has declined dramatically. Read More
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Manufacturing Employment
Manufacturing’s share of total U.S. employment has been dropping for at least 60 years. Since 1975 alone, the share plummeted from about 22% to roughly 11% of all nonfarm jobs. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payrolls grew by 215,000 in November, beating consensus expectations by 5,000 jobs. This followed meager growth in September (17,000) and October (44,000), which was attributable to Hurricane Katrina’s direct and indirect effects. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District unemployment rate rose 0.1 percentage point to 5.8% in September. Although employment increased 0.3% over the month, both labor force and number of unemployed were estimated to have grown even more (0.4% and 0.6%, respectively). Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payrolls grew by 56,000 jobs in October, and September’s job loss was revised from 35,000 to 8,000. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate rose from 5.6% in July to 5.7% in August. Although employment increased 0.1% during the month, the labor force is estimated to have grown even more (0.2%). Read More
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Employment in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area
Although the 2001 recession ended almost four years ago, payroll employment in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area has yet to return to its prerecession levels. In this respect, it is unlike both the U.S. and Pennsylvania. Read More
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Employment Growth in the Fourth District’s Urban Areas
In the early 1990s, employment growth in the Fourth District’s urban areas (metropolitan statistical areas or MSAs) mirrored that of MSAs throughout the nation. Read More
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Labor Markets
Employment changed little in September. After a total upward revision of 77,000 jobs for July and August, nonfarm payroll employment declined by 35,000 jobs in September, significantly fewer than had been anticipated in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Read More
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Mass Layoffs in Ohio
The Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification (WARN) Act protects workers, their families, and their communities by requiring employers to give notice 60 days before plant closings and mass layoffs. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate fell to 5.6% in July, down 0.2 percentage point from June and its lowest level in nearly three years. The U.S. rate fell from 5.0% in July to 4.9% in August. Read More
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Older Americans in the Workforce
Labor force participation among workers 55 and older declined significantly from the late 1940s to the mid-1990s. Participation rates for older males dropped, possibly because rising wealth has allowed them to retire earlier. Read More
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Labor Markets
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 169,000 in August. Although the month’s gains were below the consensus estimate, the economy’s average monthly job gain of 195,000 over the last three months remains strong. Read More
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The Incidence of Nominal and Real Wage Rigidities in Great Britain: 1978-1998
This paper analyzes the extent of rigidities in wage setting in Great Britain over the 1980s and 1990s. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
In June, the Fourth District’s unemployment rate held steady at 5.8% for the third consecutive month. The U.S. unemployment rate was 5.0% in both June and July. Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor markets continued to improve in July. Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 207,000, slightly above the average monthly gain of 188,000 jobs in first half of the year. Read More
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Accounting for the Jobless Recoveries
Much has been made of the so-called jobless recovery of the past two business cycles—that is, their atypically weak employment growth early in the expansion phase. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate, which has been above the U.S. average for 30 consecutive months, remained unchanged at 5.8% in May. Read More
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Employment Costs
Firms’ costs of employing workers include wages and salaries as well as benefits. Total compensation costs, as measured by the Employment Cost Index (ECI), continue to grow only moderately. Read More
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Ohio’s Labor Market
Throughout this recovery, Ohio has had the most stubbornly high unemployment rate of any Fourth District state. Ohio’s rate has exceeded 6% in all but one month since January 2003, whereas the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen from more than 6%. Read More
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Unemployment Changes
Nonfarm job openings and separations influence the dynamics of the labor market. The U.S. rate of job separations has recently trended up and is now close to its average 2001 recession level of 3.5%. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm employment increased by 146,000 jobs in June, exactly half the gains posted in April (292,000) but about 50% more than in May (104,000). Read More
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West Virginia Employment and Income
Throughout the 1990s, West Virginia’s unemployment rate was significantly higher than the nation’s. Since the last recession ended, however, it has tracked the U.S. average closely. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate for April fell to 5.9%, its second consecutive monthly decline of 0.1 percentage point. The nation’s unemployment rate was 5.2% in April and fell to 5.1% in May, the lowest since September 2001. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 78,000 jobs in May, the smallest monthly gain since August 2003. However, job growth averaged 176,000 throughout April and May, generally in line with the average monthly gain of 184,000 in the previous 12 months. Read More
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Unemployment Insurance
The U.S. Unemployment Insurance (UI) program, launched by the Social Security Act of 1935, gives monetary assistance to the unemployed. The program is also a countercyclical tool that helps sustain income levels in difficult economic times. Read More
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Labor Productivity Growth Across States
Labor productivity growth, a measure of output per unit of work, is closely tied to gains in wages and living standards, and it provides a direct measure of a country’s competitive position over time. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
In March, Fourth District’s unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage point to 6.0%, compared to the 5.2% U.S. average (which was unchanged in April). The number of unemployed people in the District fell by about 7,000 (down 1.3%) from February to March. Read More
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Labor Markets
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 274,000 in April, well above the consensus estimate of 175,000 and the first quarter’s monthly average of 190,000. Furthermore, February and March increases were revised up a net 93,000 jobs. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
In February, the Fourth District’s unemployment rate rose 0.4 percentage point (pp) to 6.1%, double the U.S. increase of 0.2 pp from 5.2% to 5.4%. (March data show the U.S. unemployment rate falling back to 5.2%.) Read More
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Pennsylvania Employment
In 2003, Pennsylvania’s industrial structure resembled the nation’s in many ways but, like many Midwestern states, the share of its workforce in the manufacturing sector was slightly above the U.S. average (15% versus 12%). Read More
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Labor Markets
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 110,000 in March, less than the average monthly increase of 183,000 in 2004. The average monthly employment gain for 2005:IQ was 159,000, down from the average of 190,000 in 2004:IVQ. Read More
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Measuring Employment in the Fourth District
The Fourth District unemployment rate fell to 5.7% in January; the U.S. average for the month was 5.2%. In March, the national unemployment rate, which is available sooner than the regional measures, was unchanged. Read More
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Compensation Costs
Measures of compensation growth are sensitive to differences in method: Both the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC) and the Employment Cost Index (ECI) gauge the cost of labor. Read More
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Labor Force Participation
In the 46 months between the March 2001 business cycle peak and January 2005, the labor force participation rate fell to 65.8%. After the 1990 recession, however, the rate slightly exceeded prerecession levels (66.6%) within 46 months of the peak. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment grew by 262,000 jobs in February 2005, exceeding the 183,000 average monthly gain in 2004. At 132.8 million, nonfarm payroll employment surpassed the February 2001 peak by about 300,000 jobs. Read More
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Employment in the Fourth District
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate fell to 5.8% in December. This decline seems to have been driven largely by a reduction in the estimated size of the labor force; estimated employment actually fell slightly during the month. Read More
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Kentucky Employment
Kentucky’s labor market conditions stand out among the Fourth District states. Indeed, its December unemployment rate of 4.5% was the lowest in the District and almost a full percentage point below the U.S. average. Read More
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Job Reallocation in the Recovery
The labor market recovery after the November 2001 business cycle trough has been unusually weak. Has increased sectoral reallocation (a permanent shift in a way employment is distributed among economic sectors) been a factor in this slow transition? Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment increased 146,000 in January. December’s growth was revised down 24,000, although the employment level was raised 161,000 after the benchmark revision and updating of seasonal factors. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
By some measures, Ohio’s economic performance during the current recovery has been disappointing. Ohio trails the other Fourth District states in employment growth. Read More
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The Foreign-Born Labor Force
A significant fraction of U.S. workers were born overseas to parents who were not U.S. citizens. In 2003, these foreign-born workers represented about 14% of the labor force. Read More
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Labor Markets
Although employment growth continued in 2004, it was disappointing compared to earlier expansions. Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 157,000 in December, better than November’s upward net gain but still below the average monthly increase. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
In November, the Fourth Federal Reserve District’s unemployment rate rose 0.1 percentage point to 6.2%, while the national unemployment rate fell by the same amount to 5.4%. Read More
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Losing Its Minds? Evaluating “Brain Drain” in Ohio
Is Ohio losing its best and brightest minds? Read More
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The Effects of Minimum Wages on the Distribution of Family Incomes: A Nonparametric Analysis
The primary goal of a national minimum wage floor is to raise the incomes of poor families with members in the work force. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment grew 112,000 in November after increasing 303,000 in October. Read More
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Measuring Employment
The most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) payroll survey reports that nonfarm employment is 0.5 million lower than it was in March 2001. Read More
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Fourth District Conditions
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate—compiled from county unemployment rates that are released a month after the states’—fell sharply in September, declining 0.3 percentage point to 5.9%. Read More
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U.S. Employment Changes
The nation’s economic recovery began in December 2001, but the labor market has taken much longer to recover. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
The Midwest traditionally has been a manufacturing-intensive region. Read More
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Measuring Labors Share of Income
Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data show labor’s share of income at a historic low. Read More
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Labor Markets
In September, total nonfarm payrolls increased by 96,000. Read More
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Fourth District Employment and Business Cycles
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate rose sharply in August to 6.2%, an increase of 0.3 percentage point (pp) from July. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 144,000 jobs in August following lackluster net gains in June and July, which were revised upward by a total of 59,000 jobs to 169,000. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate held steady at 5.8% in July, while the U.S. rate fell one-tenth of a percent to 5.5%. Read More
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Changes in U.S. Employment
From the peak of the last expansion (March 2001) to June 2004, employment in the U.S. fell 1.0%. Read More
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Ohio Employment
The seasonally adjusted Mass Layoff Statistics for Ohio showed increases from May to June in both the number of mass layoffs and the number of initial unemployment compensation claims filed. Read More
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Per Capita Income Growth and Disparity in the United States, 1929–2003
Economic theory says the average income of different regions should grow closer over time. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payrolls grew by 32,000 in July, and June’s employment gain was revised down from 112,000 to 78,000. Read More
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Fourth District Employment Conditions
The Fourth District’s unemployment rate rose slightly to 5.8% in June after falling to 5.6% in May, the lowest point on the downward trajectory from its 6.2% peak in early 2003. Read More
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Revisions of Employment Data
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly employment report may be the most widely followed economic release. Read More
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Loggers vs. Campers: Compensation for the Taking of Property Rights
Governments often have the power to take property rights from private citizens but their responsibility to pay compensation is typically not well specified. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment slowed after three months of robust growth, reporting a net increase of only 112,000 jobs in June. Read More
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Why Are We Losing Manufacturing Jobs?
In the last 50 years, the share of employment in manufacturing has declined in the United States. Read More
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Earnings and Employment
Between May 2001 and May 2004, real average hourly earnings rose a total of 2.0% (0.6% per year on average). Read More
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Fourth District Conditions
By one measure (using Establishment Survey data), job creation has been so weak during some phases of the current recovery—even worse than in the previous, so-called “jobless” recovery—that some have dubbed this the “job loss” recovery. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment rose 248,000 in May. Read More
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The Employment Services Industry
Employment services was one of the fastest-growing industries throughout the 1990s. By March 2001, the end of the expansion, it accounted for 3.6 million workers (2.7% of U.S. employment). Read More
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Fourth District Unemployment Rates
Unemployment patterns in the Fourth District generally follow national trends very closely. Read More
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Employment Surveys Are Telling the Same Sad Story
Two government surveys are used to gather information about employment in the U.S. economy, but the employment levels calculated from the surveys seem to provide conflicting pictures of the labor market. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment registered a net increase of 288,000 jobs in April. Read More
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Wage and Employer Changes Over the Life Cycle
Economists have long observed that wages alone do not fully reflect a job’s value—job “amenities” also play a role. Recent empirical studies have confirmed this observation to be the case. Read More
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U.S. Employment in the Recovery
In his recent testimony before Congress, Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan referred to the labor market’s peculiar performance in this recovery, noting that “the expansion of employment has significantly lagged increases in output.” Read More
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Labor Markets
In March, nonfarm payrolls added 308,000 jobs on net, the largest gain since April 2000. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment recorded a net gain of only 21,000 jobs in February, compared with forecasters’ projection of a 128,000 net gain. The previous two months’ net gains were revised down by a total of 23,000. Read More
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Employment Changes
The change in aggregate employment is the difference between gross job creations and gross job destruction. Read More
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The International Monetary Fund
Since its creation in 1945, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has grown from 45 member countries to 184. Read More
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Unemployment Insurance Claims
Unemployment insurance claims, a closely followed economic indicator, have trended sharply downward over the last two months. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment posted a net gain of 112,000 jobs in January 2004, its fifth consecutive monthly gain. Read More
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Migration of College Graduates
The U.S. Department of Education conducts a Baccalaureate and Beyond survey that tracks the location, employment, and family patterns of college graduates. Read More
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Employment Trends
The labor market’s 2003 performance was mixed, with disappointing numbers for the first half of the year and significant improvement in the final four months. Read More
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Labor Markets
Total nonfarm employment posted a net gain of 57,000 jobs in November, its fourth consecutive monthly gain this year. Read More
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The Employment Cost Index
From the perspective of U.S. firms, the cost of employing workers goes far beyond wages and salaries. Read More
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Regional Labor Markets
Since the most recent recession began in March 2001, total U.S. employment has declined nearly 1.8% (roughly 2.4 million jobs). Read More
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Measuring Employment Changes
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ new data series, Business Employment Dynamics, measures the gross gains and losses that underlie net changes in employment. Read More
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Labor Markets
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 126,000 jobs in October. Read More
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Labor Markets
After losing a revised 41,000 jobs in August, total nonfarm employment posted a net gain of 57,000 in September, its first increase in eight months. The revisions halved the figure reported earlier. Read More
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The United Auto Workers’ Contract
In September, the United Auto Workers (UAW) finished negotiating its contract with the Big Three automakers— General Motors, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment fell 93,000 jobs in August. Net losses were revised from 44,000 to 49,000 jobs for July and from 72,000 to 83,000 jobs for June. Read More
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Labor Markets
Total nonfarm payroll employment fell by 44,000 jobs in July after dropping a revised 72,000 jobs in June, more than double the June losses reported in the preliminary estimate. Read More
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The Employment Cost Index
The Employment Cost Index (ECI) is a quarterly measure of the rate of change in employers’ costs for both wages and benefits. Read More
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Labor Markets
Total nonfarm payroll employment fell by 30,000 jobs in June, after losing a revised 22,000 in April and 70,000 in May. Read More
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Nearsighted Justice
Chapter 11 structures complex negotiations between creditors and debtors that are overseen by a bankruptcy court. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm employment posted a net loss of 17,000 jobs in May. Read More
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Ready, Willing, and Able? Measuring Labor Availability in the UK
The unemployment rate is commonly assumed to measure labour availability, but this ignores the fact that potential workers frequently come from outside the current set of labour market participants, the so-called inactive. Read More
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How Amenities Affect Job and Wage Choices over the Life Cycle
Observing the current wage at a job may not fully reflect the "value" of that job. Read More
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Labor Markets
Total nonfarm payroll employment fell by 48,000 jobs in April 2003, after losing a revised 124,000 jobs in March. Read More
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Employment and Earnings
Real average hourly earnings have shown two distinct patterns since the beginning of the 1990s. Read More
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Changes in Measuring Employment
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is in the process of changing its reporting of employment figures to conform to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), which will replace the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system. Read More
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Employment Growth
The gradual changes in total employment that are now occurring result from far larger flows of workers being hired or separated from jobs. Read More
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Labor Markets
Total nonfarm payroll employment posted a net loss of 108,000 jobs in March, the second consecutive monthly decline this year. Read More
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Employment Changes
So far, the labor market has shown little evidence that the economy is recovering. Read More
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Labor Markets
In February, nonfarm payroll employment fell by 308,000 jobs, the biggest monthly decline since November 2001. Read More
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Manufacturing Employment
The manufacturing industry tends to bear the brunt of U.S. recessions, when the industry’s employment typically falls more sharply than total nonfarm private employment. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment gained 143,000 in January. Read More
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Labor Markets
As always, the new year brings retrospection as well as resolutions and forecasts. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment posted a net loss of 40,000 jobs in November. Employment numbers for October and September, however, have been revised upward by 11,000 and 9,000, respectively. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment held steady in October with a net loss of just 5,000 jobs. Revisions, however, show that the September loss was less than half the number reported earlier. Read More
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Labor Markets
Preliminary September nonfarm employment figures show a decline of 43,000, but revisions to both July and August suggest much stronger growth than was initially thought. Read More
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Distribution of Occupations in 1950 and 1990
The labor market has undergone fundamental changes since the middle of the last century. Read More
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Manufacturing Employment
Manufacturing employment declined significantly during the most recent recession. Read More
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Life Cycle Wage and Job Changes
While the majority of job changers who state they were not fired or laid off choose jobs with wages that are higher than their previous jobs, a substantial proportion of these job changers choose jobs that have lower wages. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment grew by 39,000 jobs in August. Estimates for July employment growth were revised upward to 67,000, far higher than the previously estimated growth of 6,000 jobs. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment was virtually unchanged in July (up 6,000) after a revised increase of 66,000 jobs in June. Read More
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Labor Earnings Growth
Measures of labor earnings growth are quite sensitive to differences in definition and method. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment rose 36,000 jobs in June, making 2002:IIQ monthly average employment growth equal to 13,000 jobs. Read More
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Employment in the Fourth District
Kentucky reported the Fourth District’s lowest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for May (5.3%), while rates in Ohio (5.8%) and Pennsylvania (5.7%) were the same as—or slightly lower than—the U.S. average of 5.8%. Read More
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Imperfect Capital Markets and Nominal Wage Rigidities
Should monetary policy respond to asset prices? This paper analyzes a general equilibrium model with imperfect capital markets and rigid nominal wages. Read More
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Does It Pay to Work?
Does it pay to work? This is a tough question to answer because of the complexity of the tax code and a plethora of dynamic linkages involved. Read More
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Labor Markets
May was an important month for the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Payroll Employment Survey. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment added 43,000 jobs in April, the first net gain since August 2001. Read More
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Employment Change
The National Bureau of Economic Research dated the start of the latest recession at March 2001. Many analysts have proposed December 2001, or perhaps January 2002, as an ending date, and recent labor market data tend to support their view. Read More
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Labor Markets
Although nonfarm payroll employment added 58,000 jobs in March, the indicators still appear weak. Read More
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Labor Markets
Preliminary estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that nonfarm employment gained 66,000 jobs in February, the first month of jobs growth since July 2001. Read More
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Labor Markets
Although January’s employment report shows another decline, it is much less severe than those for the final months of 2001. Read More
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Recessions and Employment Change
The National Bureau of Economic Research, a U.S. organization that dates business cycles, recently announced that the current recession (shown as a shaded area on the charts above) began in March 2001. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment fell 124,000 in December, a much smaller decline than those of October and November. Read More
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The Employment of Nations — A Primer
This paper examines low-frequency movements in employment in a cross section of industrialized countries for the period 1960-95, using both aggregate and disaggregated data. Read More
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Labor Markets
Further labor market deterioration was evidenced by another drop in nonfarm payroll employment (331,000 jobs) in November. Read More
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Unemployment in the Fourth District
Unemployment rates for the Fourth District states of Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania were already on the rise before September 11. Read More
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Labor Markets
Payroll employment dropped sharply in October, posting an unusually large preliminary loss (415,000 jobs net). This decline is twice as large as September’s and the largest recorded since May 1980. Read More
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Migration in the U.S.
Typical U.S. migration patterns show that for any year, gross flows into and out of a given region are large relative to net flows. In 1999–2000, the South accounted for the largest numbers of both in- and out-migrants. Read More
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Business Employment Growth
The Current Employment Statistics survey is undergoing a major revision so that it can account better for employment added when new businesses open and lost when existing businesses close. Read More
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Labor Markets
September’s employment decline was the largest since 1991; even so, it may understate the changes taking place. Payroll employment fell 199,000, its fourth decline in the past six months. Read More
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Ohio Unemployment
Ohio’s unemployment rate generally follows the U.S. trend, but since the beginning of 2001, Ohio’s rate (reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics) has diverged notably from the national trend. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment fell again in August by 113,000 jobs, reversing the gains made in July. Revised data for July, as for previous months, now show more favorable employment conditions than previously reported. Read More
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Productivity Gains: How Permanent?
This Economic Commentary confirms unusually robust productivity growth of the last few years and explores reasonable assumptions about the likely future pattern of productivity growth. Read More
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Manufacturing in Ohio
It is no surprise that Ohio, long considered to have a heavily industrial economy, derives more than 25% of its gross state product from the manufacturing industry. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment fell again in July, although the loss of 42,000 is much smaller than the 93,000 posted in June. Industries with no significant net employment loss are now showing very little growth. Read More
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Union Membership
This country’s 16.3 million labor union members accounted for only 13.5% of all workers in 2000, continuing the downward trend from the 20.1% membership rate reported in 1983 (the first year in which comparable data were available). Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment posted a net loss of 114,000 jobs in June, a dramatic reversal of May’s (revised) net gain of 8,000 jobs. June’s preliminary figure shows the second considerable loss in the last three months. Read More
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Labor Markets
The downward trend in payroll employment continued in May, with a net loss of 19,000 jobs, but this was a considerable improvement over April’s loss of 182,000 jobs. Read More
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Marriage and Consumption Insurance: What's Love Got to Do With It?
This paper explores the role of marriage when markets are incomplete so that individuals cannot diversify their idiosyncratic labor income risk. Read More
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Labor Markets
The downward trend in payroll employment continued in April, with a net loss of 223,000 jobs. As in March, large job losses occurred in manufacturing and help supply services. Read More
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Labor Markets
In March, manufacturing and help supply services (temporary help) posted large employment losses, which combined with below-average gains in most service industries to cause a net decrease of 86,000 in total nonfarm payrolls. Read More
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Labor Markets
In the U.S., inequality among individuals in both consumption and income increases with age, although it is unclear how large a role income inequality plays in consumption inequality. Read More
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Unemployment in Canada and the U.S.
Since the early 1980s, the U.S. unemployment rate has been about two percentage points lower than Canada’s. Before that time, the two countries’ unemployment rates were almost identical. Read More
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Production Workers’ Earnings
The American economy has experienced a 60% increase in real per capita output since 1970. Read More
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Labor Markets
Unusual winter weather made for large seasonally adjusted employment gains in construction, contributing strongly to January’s 268,000-job surge in nonfarm payrolls. Read More
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Workers’ Health Insurance Costs
The incidence of health insurance coverage varies considerably by income. As the table shows, full-time workers at or below poverty line are over five times more likely to be uninsured than are workers whose income is at least 300% of poverty line. Read More
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Long-Term Federal Budget Projections
Congressional Budget Office’s projections suggest that, if current policies remain in place, federal revenues will grow comparably to GDP and will stay just below 20% of GDP through 2070 (under mid-range economic and demographic assumptions). Read More
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Labor Markets
Despite signs of weakening in the overall economy, labor markets held steady, albeit with slower job growth than earlier in 2000. Read More
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Productivity and the Term Structure
The recent record-setting economic expansion and the accompanying record-setting bull market in stocks are often attributed to Federal Reserve interest rate policy and increased productivity. Read More
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Labor Markets
Weak hiring in the government sector constrained growth in total nonfarm employment to only 94,000 last month. Read More
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Manufacturing in Ohio
The concentration of U.S. employment has been shifting from the goods-producing sector to the service sector (see Economic Trends, September 2000). Read More
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Labor Markets
Total nonfarm employment showed a net gain of 137,000 workers last month, comparable to September’s gain of 148,000 (adjusted for the effect of strikes and the layoff of the last sizeable contingent of temporary census workers). Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor markets rebounded in September after two consecutive declines in monthly employment. Read More
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Labor Markets
In August, total nonfarm employment registered its largest monthly decline (105,000) since 1991. Read More
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Labor Market Trends
Among the most striking labor market trends of the past 50 years is the shift in employment from the goods-producing sector to the service sector. Read More
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Labor Markets
Shrinking government payrolls and slower private-sector employment growth caused total nonfarm employment to fall 108,000 jobs in July, the first monthly decline since January 1996. Read More
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Labor Markets
The 190,000 temporary census workers who were dropped from government payrolls contributed heavily to June’s lower-thanexpected total nonfarm employment growth (only 11,000, the smallest increase since January 1996). Read More
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Home Production Meets Time-To-Build
An innovation in this paper is to introduce a time-to-build technology for the production of market capital into a model with home production. Read More
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What Accounts For the Decline in Crime?
The authors' dynamic equilibrium model guides their quantitative investigation of the major determinants of property-crime patterns in the U.S. Read More
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Labor Markets
Payroll employment growth slowed unexpectedly in May. Read More
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Long-Term Trends in Banking Conditions
During the severe economic downturn of the early 1930s, more than one-third of U.S. banks ceased operations. Read More
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Protectionist Demands in Globalization
We analyze a small open economy. The citizens have single-peaked preferences on the tariff ratefor an import good. They declare a publicly most preferred tariff rate to the government which hasdiscretion in the choice of the implemented tariff rate. Read More
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Labor Markets
Employment showed strong growth in April (340,000 workers), following March’s upwardly revised gain of 458,000. Read More
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Ohio Business Openings and Closings
New businesses in Ohio opened at an average of 27,000 annually between 1988 and 1998. Read More
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Education and Earnings in the U.S.
Americans have made remarkable gains in educational attainment over the last half-century. Read More
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Productivity Growth
Productivity growth (the increase in nonfarm business output per hour of work) has been a key factor in the strength and duration of the current economic expansion. Read More
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Labor Markets
After the smallest monthly increase in four years, payroll employment surged by 416,000 workers in March. Read More
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Labor Markets
After making substantial increases in January, employers added only 43,000 workers to payrolls in February. Read More
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Labor Markets
Payroll employment continued to surge in January, recording a net increase of 387,000 jobs. Read More
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Employment in the Fourth District
Recent Fourth District unemployment rates show a distinct geographic pattern. Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor markets surged in December as the economy continued to show steady job growth. Read More
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Migration and Occupational Change
Shifting economic conditions often lead to occupational and geographical mobility. Read More
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Labor Markets
The labor market continues to show steady growth. Over the past 12 months, the economy has added jobs at the rate of about 225,000 per month. Read More
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The Effects of Minimum Wages Throughout the Wage Distribution
This paper provides evidence on a wide set of margins along which labor markets can adjust in response to increases in the minimum wage, including wages, hours, employment, and ultimately labor income. Read More
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The Employment Cost Index
The Employment Cost Index (ECI), an important measure of compensation growth, gauges changes in employers’ labor costs. Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor markets surged in October, as job growth partially offset disruptions caused the previous month by Hurricane Floyd. U.S. payrolls rose 310,000 in October, after a September increase of only 41,000. Read More
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Are We in a Productivity Boom? Evidence from Multifactor Productivity Growth
With the U.S. unemployment rate at a 30-year historic low and the labor force expected to grow only about 1 percent in the near future, increased productivity could be the key to preserving the country’s robust, noninflationary GDP growth. Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor markets were mixed in September. Although the unemployment rate remained at its 29-year low of 4.2%, employers cut 8,000 jobs from payrolls. Hurricane Floyd contributed to the decline, the first in almost four years. Read More
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Household Production and Development
The authors introduce home production into the neoclassical growth model and examine its consequences for development economics, focusing on how differences in policies that distort capital accumulation explain international income differences. Read More
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The Economy in Perspective
By the sweat of our brow … Everyone knows the story: U.S. agricultural employment has plummeted since the 1920s, when farm jobs made up about 20% of total U.S. employment. Read More
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Unemployment
The civilian unemployment rate has declined to levels not seen for 30 years. This rate, which reached a post–World War II peak of just over 10% during parts of 1982 and 1983, now hovers around 4.3%. Read More
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Labor Markets
Despite a slowing in employment growth, labor markets generally remained strong in August. Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor markets showed no signs of weakening in July. The unemployment rate remained a low 4.3%, and nonfarm payrolls showed a solid increase. Read More
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Firms' Wage Adjustments: A Break from the Past?
Despite advances in understanding the policies that cause inflation, economists know little about inflation’s manifestations and transmission in the marketplace Read More
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Labor Markets
June employment bounced back from losses in May, adding 268,000 jobs. Despite the rosier overall picture, manufacturing and mines continued to cut their payrolls. Read More
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Labor Productivity
A three-year surge in productivity growth underlies the current robust state of the U.S. economy. Some commentators have cited the recent strength of productivity numbers as evidence that the U.S. has entered a “new economy.” Read More
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More on Marriage, Fertility, and the Distribution of Income
According to Pareto, the distribution of income depends on "the nature of the people comprising a society, on the organization of the latter, and, also, in part, on chance." Read More
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Labor Markets
Key measures of labor market activity were mixed in May. The pace of job creation for the month was well below average for the current expansion. Read More
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The Economy in Perspective
About that NAIRU jacket ... The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ just-released May labor report failed to settle differences of opinion about labor market tightness. Read More
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Measuring Total Employment: Are a Few Million Workers Important?
Each month employment reports are eagerly awaited by economic analysts and small and large investors alike. Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor markets were strong in April. Payroll employment growth rebounded from minimal gains in March, and the unemployment rate rose slightly from the 29-year low reached a month earlier. Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor market indicators in March were mixed, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting slow employment growth and reductions in both labor force participation and the unemployment rate. Read More
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Multifactor Productivity Growth
With the unemployment rate near its historic low and the labor force expected to grow only about 1% in the near future, increased productivity could be the key to ... Read More
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The Third Industrial Revolution: Technology, Productivity, and Income Equality
The author examines periods of rapid technological change for coincidences of widening inequality and slowing productivity growth. Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor markets’ vigorous growth showed no sign of abating in February. Read More
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Unemployment Rates
A seven-year economic expansion has brought U.S. unemployment to 4.3%, its lowest rate since the 1960s. The change has been felt throughout the nation. Read More
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Labor Markets
Robust labor market growth continued unabated in the first month of 1999, contrary to early predictions of slowing. Read More
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Will Increasing the Minimum Wage Help the Poor?
After holding at $3.35 per hour from 1983 to 1989, the minimum wage has been raised four times over the past decade, reaching $5.15 per hour in September 1997. Read More
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Employment Cost Index
From the firm’s perspective, the cost of employing workers extends substantially beyond the wages and salaries paid to those workers. Benefits packages represent 28% of employment costs. Read More
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Workweek Changes
The French National Assembly recently reduced the standard workweek from 39 hours to just 35. France followed the Netherlands, which began a program in 1988 to reduce the workweek to a mere 36 hours in certain sectors. Read More
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Labor Markets
December’s labor market data continued to indicate strength, closing out an impressive year. Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor markets showed renewed signs of strength in November. Read More
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Fourth District Unemployment
Over the last year, unemployment has been dropping steadily in most of the Fourth Federal Reserve District. Read More
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International Unemployment Rates
The imminent European currency unification has focused more attention on the relative performance of various countries’ economies. Read More
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Earnings Inequality
Policymakers are concerned not only with achieving rapid economic growth but also with how the fruits of growth are distributed across the population. Read More
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Labor Markets
Most employment indicators held steady in October, but employment costs implied labor-market tightness in the third quarter. Read More
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Age and Earnings
Earnings inequality — both for women compared to men and for blacks compared to whites — has decreased substantially since the 1960s, but different age groups have had widely differing experiences. Read More
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Job Tenure
During an economic expansion, new job opportunities appear, not only for the unemployed but also for those who already have jobs. Read More
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Labor Markets
Evidence of a moderating labor market continued to mount in September. Job growth was at its lowest level since January 1996. The unemployment rate crept upward, while weekly hours worked declined. Read More
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Unemployment and Economic Welfare
Statistics that measure labor market activity are often interpreted as measures of economic performance and social well being. This article demonstrates such interpretations are not justified in the absence of certain information. Read More
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What Labor Market Theory Tells Us About the "New Economy"
An investigation of whether economic theory supports the claim that a technology shock can change the "natural rate of unemployment." Read More
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Introduction to the Search Theory of Unemployment
The search theory approach to understanding unemployment flourished during the 1980s and 1990s. It has provided economists with a rich set of models for analyzing unemployment and labor market issues more generally. Read More
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Labor Markets
August’s nonfarm employment growth was exceptional (365,000), partly because of workers’ return after the General Motors strike. Read More
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Labor Market Conditions
In July, labor markets showed strength tempered by the effects of the General Motors strike. Nonfarm payrolls increased despite job losses in the manufacturing sector, and the unemployment rate held constant. Read More
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Labor Market Strength
The strong current recovery has been exceptional in many ways, perhaps most remarkably in producing the lowest unemployment rate since early 1970. Read More
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Labor Markets
The pace of jobs creation slowed in June, raising the unemployment rate to 4.5% from the 28-year low of 4.3% seen in April and May. Read More
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Productivity Gains During Business Cycles: What’s Normal?
Productivity links the labor force to the economy’s real output, a key position that makes productivity growth one of the most eagerly forecast and analyzed economic statistics. Read More
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Regional Variations in White-Black Earnings
An examination of why black Americans' earnings continue to lag whites' and why the problem is especially acute in the southern states. Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor markets remained strong in May, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nonfarm payrolls rose 296,000 for the month, a far bigger increase than was widely expected. Read More
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The Long-run Employment Outlook
How will our economy look in 2006? Many sources of uncertainty confound long-run projections like the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) estimates of employment patterns. Read More
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Productivity Measures and the “New Economy”
Optimism abounds. Just look at indicators like consumer sentiment and the stock market. Read More
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Labor Markets
April was a record-setting month for many labor market indicators. The unemployment rate fell to levels not seen since 1970, the employment to population ratio ... Read More
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In Search of the NAIRU
Few ideas arise more frequently in monetary policy discussions than the NAIRU, an acronym for the awkward phrase “nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment.” Read More
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Skills and Unemployment
The economy’s recovery from the 1990–91 recession has brought with it very low unemployment levels reminiscent of those seen 40 years ago. Read More
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Ohio Employment and Population Trends
Employment in Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus, Ohio’s largest cities, is increasing at similar rates and in step with the state’s overall performance. Read More
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The Employment Cost Index
The Employment Cost Index (ECI) measures U.S. firms’ total compensation costs (wages plus benefits). Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor markets eased slightly in March. Nonfarm payrolls fell 36,000 for the month, the first decline in more than a year. Read More
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Labor Markets
The economy continued to strengthen in February, with nonfarm employment expanding by 310,000. Since last October, 1.76 million new jobs have been added, the best fivemonth posting since the middle of 1994. Read More
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Worker Compensation and Health Care Costs
For a year now, labor markets have been characterized as tight. When the unemployment rate remains low over a long period, wages are expected to increase as employers compete to hire the small number of available workers. Read More
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Labor Markets
The U.S. employment situation was exceptionally strong again in January, as the economy continued to generate jobs for a rapidly expanding labor force. Read More
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Capital and Labor in the U.S. Economy
Producing the nation’s output requires the use of capital and labor services. Read More
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Reducing Working Hours: A General Equilibrium Analysis
This paper examines the effects of restricting the weekly hours of workers in a heterogeneous-agent, general equilibrium framework. Read More
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Labor Markets
With the unemployment rate hitting a 24-year low in November, the employment-to-population ratio at a historic high, and reports of scattered labor shortages on the rise, analysts are increasingly characterizing the labor market as “tight.” Read More
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Labor Force Growth and the Unemployment Rate
Will strong employment growth alone push the unemployment rate to zero? Read More
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Labor Markets
The unemployment rate reached a 24-year low in December, as strong jobs growth outpaced an expanding labor force. Nonfarm payrolls were up 404,000, pushing the unemployment rate to 4.6%, a level not seen since October 1973. Read More
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Fourth District Employment
Like the nation as a whole, Fourth District states have witnessed sharp declines in unemployment rates since late 1991. Read More
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Labor Markets
October was characterized by widespread strength in the nation’s labor markets, as nonfarm payrolls gained an unexpectedly high 284,000 workers. Read More
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Manufacturing in Ohio
Ohio continues to be one of the most manufacturing-intensive states, with a little under 20% of all its nonfarm workers employed in the sector. Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor market growth in September appeared to recover from August's sluggish pace, with nonfarm payroll employment rising 215,000 nationwide. Read More
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The Long-run Demand for Labor in the Banking Industry
An examination of the decline in banking employment over the last decade, finding that technological changes explain the downturn only for large banks, and that acquisition accounts for very little of the overall employment shift. Read More
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Labor Markets
Despite a slight slowdown, the nation's labor markets remained strong in August. Read More
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The UPS Strike
A number of commentators have described the recent Teamsters' strike against UPS as a watershed moment in U.S labor history. Read More
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Wage Inflation and Worker Uncertainty
The leading explanation of why inflation has been so limited these last three years is that wage demands have been held down by an unusually high degree of “worker uncertainty.” Read More
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Labor Markets
The nation's labor markets showed robust growth in July, with nonfarm payrolls posting a high-than-expected gain of 316,000 workers. Read More
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Unemployment and Job Vacancies
The U.S. labor market is characterized by tremendous churning, with approximately 7 million people entering or leaving in a single month. Read More
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Marriage Penalties and Bonuses
Several features of the current income tax code result in marriage "penalties" and "bonuses." Read More
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Exports and Employment
As the U.S. economy opens up to more international trade, the popular press has tended to focus on the loss of American jobs associated with increasing imports. Read More
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Population and Employment Patterns
As American have migrated to the West and South, so have their jobs. Along the way, the composition of these jobs has changed. Read More
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Labor Markets
Although the overall unemployment rate edged up to 5.0% in June, the most recent employment statistics continue to portray a robust labor market. Read More
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Workforce Composition and Earnings Inequality
A presentation of a model that incorporates many factors simultaneously -- including education, experience, and industry choice -- to explain the growing disparity in Americans' earnings. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payrolls grew by 138,000 in May, a smaller-than-expected gain that masked an otherwise robust labor market. Read More
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Employment Variability
Conventional wisdom says that Japanese workers tend to experience less volatility in employment than do Americans, partly because many workers in Japan's largest firms have what amounts to a life-time employment contract. Read More
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Labor Productivity
Growth in labor productivity (typically measured as real output per hour of work) is critical to economic health because it is the primary source of real wage growth. Read More
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Okun's Law Revisited: Should We Worry about Low Unemployment?
The quotation above expresses a common, if not dominant, view of the genesis of inflationary pressure in an economy. The story goes something like this: High GDP growth eventually places excessive strain on a nation's resources. Read More
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Identifying Inflation's Grease and Sand Effects in the Labor Market
Inflation has been accused of causing distortionary price and wage fluctuations (sand) as well as lauded for facilitating adjustments to shocks when wages are rigid downwards (grease). Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor market growth in April matched March's slow pace, with nonfarm payroll employment rising 142,000. Read More
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The Benefits of NAFTA
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which took effect on January 1, 1994, will curtail most barriers to trade and investment between Canada, Mexico and the U.S. by the time it is fully implemented in 2004. Read More
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Workplace Fatalities
Real wages represent only one aspect of the employment contract. Another aspect is working conditions, especially the safety of the environment. Read More
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Labor Markets
Despite slower employment growth in March, the labor situation continues to brighten. Nonfarm payrolls advanced at a moderate pace (175,000 net new jobs). Read More
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State Employment Patterns
Regional labor market data from January 1996 to January 1997 show a pattern of widespread growth across the country, with a 2.2% overall increase in employment. Read More
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Labor Markets
U.S. labor markets continued to reflect a healthy economy in February as nonfarm payroll employment expanded by 339,000 - the largest gains in May. Read More
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The Economy in Perspective
Laboring under a false impression ... If inflation is, as Milton Friedman once said, always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, why do so many Fed-watchers scan the labor market for clues to future inflation? Read More
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U.S. Productivity Growth
Between 1965 and 1973, U.S. annual productivity growth (measured as output per hour worked) averaged 1.5%. Read More
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Employment Trends
Despite periodic fluctuations in the pace of U.S. economic activity, the percentage of working age Americans who are employed has risen steadily since the early 1970s and now stands at a record 63.4%. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payrolls grew by 271,000 in January, continuing the fourth quarter's string of vigorous increases. Read More
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Employment Cost Index
The Employment Cost Index (ECI) is the best measure of compensation (wages and benefits) growth available to labor analysts. Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor markets remained solid in 1996, with 2.3 million jobs being added to the nation's payrolls. Read More
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The U.S. Workforce
Nothing is more certain than change, particularly economic change. The last 3 years have witnessed a dramatic transformation in the educational attainment of the U.S. workforce, along with a narrowing of race- and sex-related pay disparities. Read More
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Regional NAIRU
Some policy makers view the concept of NAIRU, the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment, as consistent with an equilibrium unemployment rate. Read More
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Work Schedules, Wages, and Employment in a General Equilibrium Model with Team Production
This paper provides a general equilibrium framework in which the number of working hours and the employment levels of heterogeneous workers is endogenously determined. Read More
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Rounding in Earnings Data
Earnings data are often reported in round numbers. Read More
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Work Stoppages
Union membership in the U.S. grew considerably during the first half of this century, from about 4% in 1901 to a peak of about 33% in the early 1950s. Read More
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Labor Markets
Civilian unemployment rose to 5.4% in November, an uptick from its August low of 5.1%, but still consistent with a robust labor market. Read More
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Reducing Working Hours
The hours of U.S. workers have shown little, if any, decline over the past few decades, while working hours in most other industrialized countries have fallen substantially. Read More
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Sectoral Wage Convergence: A Nonparametric Distributional Analysis
The large shift of U.S. employment from goods producers to service producers has generated concern over future income distribution, because of perceived large relative pay differences. Read More
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U.S. Productivity
Much has been made of the U.S. productivity slowdown, which began in the early 1970s. Read More
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Labor Markets
After a slight decline in September, nonfarm payrolls rose by 210,000 in October, continuing the trend of moderate gains that began in 1995. Read More
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On the Political Economy of Income Redistribution and Crime
In this paper, we consider a general equilibrium model in which heterogeneous agents specialize either in legitimate market activities or in criminal activities, Read More
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Labor Markets
The September jobs picture, though fuzzy, seems to show little overall change from August. There was a small (0.1%) rise in the civilian unemployment rate. Read More
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Jobs Creation and Government Policy
Before the Great Depression of the 1930s, the notion that government ought to be responsible for creating jobs would have seemed absurd. Read More
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Earnings, Education, and Experience
The value of additional education is typically measured by the increase in earnings that results. The largest gains are realized on completion of a degree, whether high school, college, or post-graduate. Read More
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Labor Markets
Continuing this year's string of strong labor market reports, August brought 250,000 net new jobs and a drop in umemployment to a seven-year low of 5.1%. Read More
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Reducing Working Hours: American Workers' Salvation?
In March 1991-the trough of the most recent recession-the civilian unemployment rate stood at 6.8 percent. Fifteen months into the recovery, that rate had increased to 7.8 percent, leading many in the media to decry the recovery as "jobless." Read More
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Skills and Unemployment
When thinking about labor market policies for reducing unemployment, it is important to consider what skills the pool of jobless people possess. More specifically, how do their skills compare with those of the employed? Read More
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Macro- and Microeconomic Consequences of Wage Rigidity
This article reviews a well-established macroeconomic literature -- wage rigidity -- from the perspective of human resource managers and economic researchers. Read More
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Wage Trends
When inflation accelerates, so does the pace at which labor costs increase. The converse, however, is not true; that is, rising labor costs do not lead to inflation. Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor markets continued to grow at a good pace in July, as nonfarm payroll employment increased by 193,000. This latest figure brings jobs growth for 1996 to an average of 230,000 per month, which is much higher than the 1995 rate. Read More
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Labor Markets
June was characterized by wide spread strength in the nation's labor markets, as nonfarm payrolls added 239,000 workers. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment surged by 348,000 in May, about twice as high as expected, while April's figure was revised upward from 2,0000 to 163,0000. Read More
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State Labor Trends
US employment growth stalled during the past year. Read More
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Productivity Trends
Growth in hourly output has decelerated significantly since the early 1970s, reflecting a decline in labor productivity growth. Read More
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The Minimum Wage
Economists prefer solutions to social problems that make some people better off without making others worse off. Read More
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Labor Markets
Employment continued its seesaw pattern in April, as nonfarm payrolls edged up by only 2,000. Read More
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Employment Revisions
Every year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) corrects the employment series for jobs missed by the monthly establishment survey, which covers more than 350,000 workplaces. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm employment moved ahead at a moderate pace in March, rising by 140,000. Read More
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State Employment 1995: Slowing to a Recession?
Employment in 1995 began with a bang and ended with a whimper, inspiring some to prognosticate a recession. Read More
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Labor Markets
Rarely has employment shown such wide month to month swings as in the first two months of 1996. Read More
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Labor Markets
The U.S. employment situation was off to an unusual start in 1996 as nonfarm payrolls tumbled by 201,000 in January. Read More
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Labor Market Trends
The U.S. workforce has undergone dramatic changes since World War II. Read More
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Labor Markets
Labor markets were solid but not spectacular in 1995, as the nation posted a yearlong employment gain of 1.5 million jobs. Read More
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Fertility and Welfare Participation
Despite the attention that the fertility of welfare recipients has received recently, surprisingly little is known about it. Read More
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Labor Markets
Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 166,000 in November, although about half the gain can be attributed to special circumstances, including a longer-than-usual survey period and the introduction of new seasonal adjustment factors. Read More
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Sectoral Wage Convergence: A Nonparametric Distributional Analysis
The large shift of U.S. employment from goods producers to service producers has generated concern over future income distribution because of perceived large relative pay differences. Read More
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The Outlook for College Graduates
In recent years, college graduates have experienced relatively low unemployment rates and rising relative wages. The continuing low share of new four-year grads in the total workforce suggests that these trends will be sustained. Read More
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Marriage and Earnings
That married men earn more than unmarried men is now a fairly well established fact. However, the source of this earnings premium remains debatable. Read More
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Labor Markets
The nation's labor markets continued to grow at a slow and steady pace in October, with nonfarm payroll employment rising by 116,000. Read More
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Are Wages Inflexible?
How often does an average worker's hourly wage change? Do employees and employers avoid wage cuts? When wage changes occur, do they tend to come in gradual, small adjustments or in the form of a single large increase? Read More
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Another Look at Part-time Employment
Since the end of the last recession in 1991, newspaper editorialists and other pundits have frequently complained about part-time work. Read More
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The Myth of the Overworked American
A perennial debate that has become even more sharply contested in recent months concerns the size and scope of government participation in markets. Read More
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Looking Back at Slow Employment Growth
Jobs growth in the current expansion has been unusually sluggish despite coming on the heels of a relatively mild recession in 1990-91. Read More
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Employment Creation and Destruction: An Analytical Review
The capacity of markets to create jobs is typically measured by net employment changes. However, net job flows veil the dynamics underlying these aggregate figures. Read More
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Regional Wage Convergence and Divergence: Adjusting Wages for Cost-of-Living Differences
After decades of convergence, the economic fortunes of U.S. regions appeared to diverge in the early 1980s as measured by both per capita income and wages. Read More
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Are Service-Sector Jobs Inferior?
In recent years, U.S. service-producing industries have, on net, added jobs more rapidly than the goods-producing industries. Read More
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Accounting for Earnings Inequality in a Diverse Work Force
A general decomposition of earnings inequality is applied to the complete full-time labor force, including minorities and women. Read More
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Free Markets and Price Stability: Opportunities for Mexico
Mexico has been making important progress on several economic fronts, moving toward less inflation, increased reliance on privately owned capital and companies, and greater integration of its economy with those of other nations. Read More
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Are the Great Lakes Cities Becoming Service Centers?
During the past 20 years, American business has restructured itself along many dimensions. Read More
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Cyclical Movements of the Labor Input and Its Implicit Real Wage
The standard measure of the labor input in aggregate production is the sum of employment hours over all individuals. Read More
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HRM Policy and Increasing Inequality in a Salary Survey
A look at the implications for human resource management of the rising wage disparity found in a three-decades-long private salary survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Read More
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White- and Blue-Collar Jobs in the Recent Recession and Recovery: Who's Singing the Blues?
Was the 1990-91 recession predominantly "white collar," as many analysts and media reports have claimed? Read More
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The Causes and Consequences of Structural Changes in U.S. Labor Markets: A Review
Despite apparently tight labor markets, wage inflation in the late 1980s was much lower than most observers anticipated. Read More
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Unbalanced Growth and the U.S. Productivity Slowdown
The single most important factor in determining a nation's standard of living in the long run is the productivity of its resources (primarily labor and capital). Read More
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Rising Inequality In A Salary Survey: Another Piece Of The Puzzle
Studies of wage inequality based solely on the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey have concluded that the recent rising trend has made family income less equally distributed. Read More
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A Dynamic Analysis Of Recent Changes In The Rate Of Part-Time Employment
The part-time employment rate has declined since the early 1980s, especially among females. Read More
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Components of City-Size Wage Differentials, 1973-1988
It has long been noted that workers in large cities are more highly paid than their rural counterparts. In studying this phenomenon, most researchers control for differences in work-force attributes between cities. Read More
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Magnification Effects and Acyclical Real Wages
An analysis of a one-period, two-sector model in which firms must pay a fixed cost of hiring. Read More
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How Are Wages Determined?
Much of the variation in wages among employees cannot be explained by the usual variables of individual worker characteristics, demographics, and industry classification. Read More
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Accounting for the Recent Divergence in Regional Wage Differentials
An explanation of the recent interruption in the long-term trend of regional wage convergence, showing that changes in the value that each census region places on worker characteristics account for much of the shift to wage divergence since 1980. Read More
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Do Wage Differences Among Employers Last?
Recent interest in efficiency wage and insider/outsider models of wage determination has drawn attention to employer-based wage differences. Read More
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Employment Distortions Under Sticky Wages and Monetary Policies to Minimize Them
A discussion of sticky nominal wages, showing that nominal income or price-level targeting policies result in smaller distortions than do policies that target output or money. Read More
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Turnover, Wages and Adverse Selection
An argument that adverse selection in the labor market can explain why frequent job-changers have lower average wages and flatter age-earnings profiles than workers who change jobs infrequently. Read More
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Service-Sector Wages: the Importance of Education
Many of the new jobs in the rapidly growing service sector offer wages that are competitive with the best manufacturing jobs. Read More
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Decomposing TFP Growth in the Presence of Cost Inefficiency, Nonconstant Returns to Scale, and Technological Progress
A decomposition of observed total factor productivity (TFP) growth that examines changes in returns to scale, cost efficiency, and technology and that develops several decompositions using production and cost frontiers. Read More
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Do the Earnings of Manufacturing and Service Workers Grow at the Same Rate Over Their Careers?
A study indicating that service workers begin employment at a lower wage than comparable manufacturing workers, and then experience similar wage growth. Read More
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Productivity, Costs, and International Competitiveness
The U.S. trade deficit has been on an improving trend recently, largely due to changes in the exchange value of the dollar. Read More
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TFP Growth, Change in Efficiency, and Technological Progress in the U.S. Airline Industry: 1970 to 1981
An overview of the airline industry's early adaptations to deregulation using a best-practice cost function approach; measures cost efficiency and changes in total factor productivity growth for airlines in the 1970s and early 1980s. Read More
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Sources of Wage Dispersion: The Contribution of Interemployer Differentials within Industry
An analysis of variance in individual production workers' wages within and between establishments, using BLS Industry Wage Surveys to examine establishment-based wage differentials. Read More
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What's Happening to Labor Compensation?
Despite recent low unemployment rates and high capacity-utilization levels, wages have remained stable. Read More
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Why Do Wages Vary Among Employers?
A review of empirical evidence on intra- and inter-industry wage differentials among industries and establishments, presenting five alternative explanations for large and persistent variance in wages across employers. Read More
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Turnover Wages and Adverse Selection
An explanation of the observed relationships between voluntary job turnover and wages over a worker's lifetime, using a model featuring adverse selection. Read More
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Implicit Contracts, On-the-Job Search and Involuntary Unemployment
This paper extends the implicit contracts framework to allow for on-the-job search. It is shown that involuntary unemployment can arise in such a framework without placing any a priori restrictions on either wages or severance payments. Read More
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Amenities and the Returns to Human Capital
A demonstration that regional differences in the returns to human capital do not necessarily imply structural differences in regional labor markets, but could be reflecting compensation for regional differences in amenities. Read More
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The Structure of the Female/Male Wage Differential: is it Who You Are, What You Do, or Where You Work?
This paper decomposes the observed wage difference between male and female workers into the portions associated with three types of segregation and with the individual's sex. Read More
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Identifying Productivity and Amenity Effects In Interurban Wage Differentials
This study focuses on the relative importance of amenity and productivity differences in determining wage differentials across urban areas. Read More
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Estimating Total Factor Productivity in a Generalized Cost System
A description of two ways of adding an equation for total factor productivity to the generalized cost system of Atkinson and Halvorsen; includes a discussion of testing for regulatory biases. Read More
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Unionization and Cost of Production: Compensation, Productivity, and Factor-Use Effects
A demonstration that unionization can affect cost of production through increases in compensation, through shifts in technologies, and through deviations from the least-cost combination of inputs (the factor-use effect). Read More
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Labor Cost Differentials: Causes and Consequences
Labor costs are often cited as the primary hindrance to economic development in cities where wages are high and as a spur to development in cities where wages are low. The relationship between labor costs and growth is complex, however. Read More
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Alternative Methods for Assessing Risk-Based Deposit-Insurance Premiums
One of the most widely debated topics in the political arena is the proposal to give the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) the power to vary the cost of deposit-insurance on the basis of risk. Read More
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Productivity Growth and the Decline of Manufacturing in Large Metropolitan Areas: 1959-78
An examination of the role of productivity differences in explaining the decline of manufacturing activity in large metropolitan areas relative to the rest of the country, especially large metropolitan areas of the Manufacturing Belt. Read More
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Reducing Risk in Wire Transfer Systems
A description of sources of risk in large-dollar transfer systems and a discussion of the Board of Governors' new mechanism for risk control. The author cites examples of potential changes that might facilitate future risk reduction. Read More
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Metropolitan Wage Differentials: Can Cleveland Still Compete?
A look at the Cleveland metropolitan labor market as a point of comparison to highlight how labor costs in a major industrial city fare with respect to other U.S. cities. Read More
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The Effects of Supplemental Income and Labor Productivity on Metropolitan Labor Cast Differentials
A discussion of the effects that the combination of supplemental income and labor productivity have on the measurement of metropolitan labor-cost differentials in manufacturing, using data from the 20 largest SMSAs. Read More
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The Impact of Regional Difference in Unionism on Employment
A study of whether changes in unionism affect the aggregate level of employment in the economy and whether an individual who lives in an SMSA where unions are weak is more likely to be employed than an individual who lives where unions are strong. Read More
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The Changing Nature of Regional Wage Differentials From 1975 to 1983
An estimate of wage differentials between the East North Central region and two Southern regions in 1975 and 1983, and a discussion of the changing nature of the differentials over that period. Read More
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Labor Market Conditions in Ohio Versus the Rest of the United States: 1973-1984
An examination of trends in employment and earnings in Ohio and the rest of the country between 1973 and 1984, looking especially at the roles of unionization and the exchange value of the dollar. Read More
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Employment and Unemployment Effects of Unions
An examination of the effect of unions on the aggregate level of employment in the economy. Read More
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Collective Bargaining and Disinflation
Labor relations and collective bargaining have changed markedly in recent years. Read More
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Plant Closings and Worker Dislocation
This article examines the justifications for plant-closing laws, analyzing whether objectives for plant-closing laws can be achieved. The authors find dislocated workers as a group do not suffer hardships any more severe than do long-term unemployed. Read More
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Prevailing Wage Laws, the Federal Reserve, and the Service Contract Act
Under the provisions of the Service Contract Act, Federal Reserve Banks must ensure that hired service contractors pay their employees according to wage scales set by the U.S. Department of Labor. Read More
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Union Wage Concessions
During the past several months, the climate of U.S. industrial relations has been characterized by a willingness on the part of trade unions to make significant wage, fringe benefit, and work-rule concessions. Read More
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Unemployment Insurance: An Old Lesson for the New Federalism?
Although the unemployment insurance (UI) system in the United States evolved through the prompting of the federal government, the UI system functions as a collage of 53 individual state programs. Read More
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Issue 1 and Workers' Compensation in Ohio
The state of Ohio, which currently forbids private-insurance companies from competing with the state-run workers' compensation program, is now in the throes of deciding whether to allow private-insurance carriers to enter the market. Read More
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Working Paper Review: The Welfare Implications of Alternative Unemployment Insurance Plans
In a working paper reviewed here, Mark S. Sniderman explores the relationship between public and private unemployment insurance systems and individual welfare. Read More
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The High-Employment Budget: Recent Changes and Persistent Shortcomings
The high-employment budget measures federal government receipts, expenditures, and the associated surplus or deficit that would result if the economy always operated at its potential or full-employment level of output. Read More
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The Welfare Implications of Alternative Unemployment Insurance Plans
A recent survey of and extension to research on the topic of unemployment insurance (UI) by Tope1 and Welch (1980) focuses on the issue of UI financing. Read More
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U.S. and Foreign Productivity and Competitiveness
Although the level of productivity is very high in the United States, productivity growth has slowed sharply in recent years. Read More
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Unemployment Insurance: A Case for a Private System
The U.S. unemployment insurance system operates through plans under the primary control of the individual states. Consequently, taxes, benefits, and eligibility requirements vary greatly throughout the nation. Read More
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The Productivity Slowdown: Is Oil the Culprit?
One of the most controversial topics debated in the United States today is the dramatic fall in productivity growth in recent years. Read More
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The Local Labor-Market Response to a Plant Shutdown
Although the shutdown of a major manufacturing plant can have a severe and lasting impact on a local economy, labor markets adjust, at least partially, to compensate for the loss of jobs. Read More