Job Market Monitor
Academic Literature
US / Lowering Expectations about Employment Gains for the coming years
“The buoyant monthly employment gains that accompanied prior recoveries are not likely to be repeated. Indeed, even if GDP growth were to surprise on the high side (3.1 percent for 2013 as illustrated in the cyclical LFPR scenario), employment growth generated by our model would still be just 147,000 per month in the current year, … Continue reading
US / Employment growth above about 80,000 jobs per month would put downward pressure on the unemployment rate finds research
Daniel Aaronson and Scott Brave « estimate that, currently, employment growth above about 80,000 jobs per month would put downward pressure on the unemployment rate » in Estimating the trend in employment growth on Chicago Fed Letter. (Adapted Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor to follow) Likewise, anything short of this benchmark would push the unemployment rate up. … Continue reading
The Digital Divide / The largest-ever field experiment on the effects of home computers on academic achievement finds no effects
Computers are an important part of modern education, yet many schoolchildren lack access to a computer at home » write Robert W. Fairlie and Jonathan Robinson in Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Home Computers on Academic Achievement among Schoolchildren (Adapted chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor to follow). In the United States, schools spend more than … Continue reading
Canada / Is the widespread assumption that Canada is suffering from a growing shortage of labour true?
“When the Royal Bank of Canada was recently caught up in a maelstrom of bad publicity over its use of temporary foreign workers, it led politicians and pundits to scrutinize and question the growing use by Canadian firms of imported, short-term labour” Kevin McQuillan in ALL THE WORKERS WE NEED: DEBUNKING CANADA’S LABOUR- SHORTAGE FALLACY (Adapted … Continue reading
Canada / People don’t want to move out of province Bank Canada research finds
In theory, this need not be a crippling blow for the national economy. In the above scenario, rational Ontarians should follow the money and migrate to Alberta to take advantage of the boom times. But as a team of Bank Canada economists remind in an excellent new study (pdf), Canada doesn’t really work this way. … Continue reading
US / Will Labor Force Participation Bounce Back? asks FRBSF
The most recent U.S. recession and recovery have been accompanied by a sharp decline in the labor force participation rate. The largest declines have occurred in states with the largest job losses. This suggests that some of the recent drop in the national labor force participation rate could be cyclical. Past recoveries show evidence of … Continue reading
US / Why Is Age 65 Still a Retirement Peak?
‘In order to address an immediate and long-term funding problem, the Social Security Amendments of 1983 gradually increased the Full Retirement Age (FRA), changed the actuarial adjustment for individuals claiming benefits between the early and full retirement ages, and increased the delayed retirement credit. Together, these changes increase the financial gain to individuals who delay … Continue reading
Measuring Income Inequality / The Standard Gini Coefficient : a ‘rightist’ measure
Recall that the Gini coefficient is a number between zero and one that measures the degree of inequality in the distribution of income in a given society (named after an Italian statistician, Corrado Gini). The coefficient is zero for a society in which each member receives exactly the same income; it reaches its maximum value … Continue reading
US / The historic decline in the employment-population ratios
‘The decline in the employment-population ratios for men and women over 2000–07, just before the Great Recession, represents a historic turnaround in U.S. employment trends’ writes Robert A. Moffitt in The Reversal of the Employment- Population Ratio in the 2000s: Facts and Explanations on brookings.edu. (Adapted chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor to follow) The decline is disproportionately concentrated among the less … Continue reading
Community-wide Job Loss on Student Achievement : Research finds positive effects on student enrollment in courses that keep them on-track to attend college
‘Understanding the impact of job loss on student achievement has grown increasingly important given the widespread job loss that occurred during the Great Recession’ writes Andy Chiamopoulos in The Effects of Community-wide Job Loss on Student Achievement on dukespace.lib.duke.edu. (Adapted chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor to follow) The author evaluates the impact of the county-level job loss within North Carolina on 9 classes … Continue reading
Low Interest Rates Didn’t Induce Job Growth finds Research by St-Louis FED
The Federal Reserve set the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 25 basis points in December 2008. It has remained there because the recovery in output and jobs has been so slow. The rate was set so low to stimulate aggregate demand and job growth (by lowering borrowing costs for consumers … Continue reading
The Impact of Wealth on Health Behaviors: a research paper
‘Unhealthy lifestyles and unhealthy consumption are more prevalent among the poor, and account for a large fraction of the substantial socioeconomic disparities in health’ write Hans van Kippersluis and Titus J. Galama in Why the Rich Drink More but Smoke Less: The Impact of Wealth on Health Behaviors on rand.org. (Adapted excerpts by Job Market Monitor to follow) The paper … Continue reading
US / Can something be done to get Good Jobs ?
Economists are of many minds on the question of whether government policies can reverse negative trends. David Autor, an economist at M.I.T., argued in an email to The Times that “we’re not going to rapidly reverse the tide with any conceivable policy that a mainstream political party or even a mainstream economist would adopt.” Autor … Continue reading
US / ‘Price stability’ remains the policy advice even in the face of serious labor market inefficiencies says St. Louis Fed’s Bullard
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard gave remarks Wednesday on “Some Unpleasant Implications for Unemployment Targeters” at the 22nd Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference. During his presentation, Bullard noted that the U.S. unemployment rate remains high by historical standards and that it has declined about 0.7 percentage points per year from its … Continue reading
Unemployment has been a much bigger problem than inflation for ordinary people research finds
“Previous literature has found that both unemployment and inflation lower happiness” write David G. Blanchflower, David N.F. Bell, Alberto Montagnoli and Mirko Moro in The effects of macroeconomic shocks on well-being (Adapted chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor to follow). The macroeconomist Arthur Okun characterised the negative effects of unemployment and inflation by the misery index – the sum of the … Continue reading
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