Back in 2012 a whistleblower told the Census Bureau about a massive fraud coming out of its Philadelphia region. One of the guys who was supposed to be going door-to-door surveying people in the Washington, DC, area about their employment situation was faking the responses. As it turned out, that guy — Julius Buckmon — … Continue reading
Every year, thousands of recent graduates of colleges and universities across the United States enter the labor force with newly minted degrees and high hopes about their employment prospects.1 In October 2011, 74.5 percent of the 1.3 million 2011 recent college graduates were employed, according to data from the Current Population Survey (CPS). The unemployment … Continue reading
In January, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics significantly reduced its projections for medium-term labor force participation. The revision implies that recent participation declines have largely been due to long-term trends rather than business-cycle effects. However, as the economy recovers, some discouraged workers may return to the labor force, boosting participation beyond the Bureau’s forecast. … Continue reading
When you’ve looked for monthly unemployment data, you have probably noticed that you can pretty readily find those data sliced by race or gender. Sometimes you can find the data arranged by age group or by educational attainment. But each of those dimensions — race or ethnicity, gender, age, and educational attainment — operate at once to … Continue reading
Three decades of stagnating earnings for bottom deciles of male wage earners and 1990s anti-poverty policies promoting employment among poor single mothers suggest increases in the ranks of low-wage breadwinners living in low-income households. Low-wage workers often get few employer sponsored benefits, while antipoverty programs target poor non-earners; these factors suggest low-wage and low-income workers may be unprotected … Continue reading
The employment rate for those aged from 16 to 64 was 70.4 per cent, up 0.1 on the quarter. There were 29.17 million people in employment aged 16 and over, up 53,000 on the quarter. The unemployment rate was 8.3 per cent of the economically active population, down 0.1 on the quarter. There were 2.65 … Continue reading
“Three decades of stagnating earnings for bottom deciles of male wage earners and 1990s anti-poverty policies promoting employment among poor single mothers suggest increases in the ranks of low-wage breadwinners living in low-income households. Low-wage workers often get few employer sponsored benefits, while antipoverty programs target poor non-earners; these factors suggest low-wage and lowincome workers … Continue reading
The unemployment rate for veterans who served on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces at any time since September 2001–a group referred to as Gulf War-era II veterans–was 12.1 percent in 2011, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The jobless rate for all veterans was 8.3 percent. Twenty-six percent of Gulf War-era … Continue reading
Debates about illegal immigration, border security, skill levels of workers, unemployment, job growth and competition, and entrepreneurship all rely, to some extent, on perceptions of immigrants’ role in the U.S. labor market. These views are often shaped as much by politics and emotion as by facts. To better frame these debates, this short analysis provides … Continue reading