I’m thinking about the rest of us, starting at the top—with the Fed—who are struggling to figure out the nature of the tradeoff as the Fed begins to contemplate unwinding. Given Chair Yellen’s (very appropriate) focus on job-market slack and thus her up-weighting of the full employment side of the mandate, there’s clearly some anxiety … Continue reading
Some have argued that the unemployment rate may overestimate labor market slack, because the long-term unemployed (LTU) are largely structurally unemployed and exert significantly less wage and price pressure. If so, then using the aggregate unemployment rate to forecast wage or price inflation may be misleading. However, this Note, along with the companion note showing … Continue reading
In the years following 2009, long-term unemployment has been very elevated while inflation has fallen only moderately, raising the question of whether the long-term unemployed exert less downward pressure on prices than the short-term unemployed, perhaps because such potential workers are disconnected from the labor market. However, empirical evidence is mixed. This analysis demonstrates that … Continue reading
Ryan Avent, having exhausted his conventional analysis of the Fed’s 2008 transcripts, turns today to a more analytical approach: counting words. I think others have already made this point without numbers, but Avent’s most powerful finding is that the Fed cares way more about inflation than it does about unemployment: There is only one winner … Continue reading
The Federal Reserve may need to let inflation run a little higher than its 2-percent target in order to bring down unemployment faster, a top Fed official said on Saturday. Strictly capping inflation at 2 percent while allowing high unemployment to linger would be an “inappropriate” approach to monetary policy, Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President … Continue reading
What we did have was a wage-price spiral: workers demanding large wage increases (those were the days when workers actually could make demands) because they expected lots of inflation, firms raising prices because of rising costs, all exacerbated by big oil shocks. It was mainly a case of self-fulfilling expectations, and the problem was to … Continue reading
Ms. Yellen is now widely viewed as a logical candidate to succeed the current Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, when his term ends in January 2014. She has worked closely with him in shaping and building support for the Fed’s campaign to stimulate the economy and bring down unemployment. But some of Ms. Yellen’s critics … Continue reading
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
“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
The National Minimum Wage Act 1998 was one of the flagship policies of Tony Blair’s newly elected Labour government. From April 1999, every worker over the age of 22 was legally entitled to at least £3.60 an hour. In 2010, it began to apply to employees aged 21 and over. For the first nine years … Continue reading
The focus on jobs represents a historic shift for the central bank that began with the 2008 financial crisis and has intensified in the face of four years of middling economic growth. But how much influence the central bank wields over unemployment remains an open question: It cannot direct businesses to hire or inspire entrepreneurs … Continue reading
Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Janet Yellen backed a proposal to link the Fed’s zero interest-rate policy to progress toward meeting its goals for inflation and employment rather than to a calendar date. “The Committee might eliminate the calendar date entirely and replace it with guidance on the economic conditions that would need to prevail before … Continue reading
Why can the U.S. government borrow at some of the lowest interest rates ever, while Spain can only borrow at exorbitant rates that threaten to drive it into bankruptcy? The difference isn’t their debt and deficits. In 2011, U.S. debt was 98% of GDP, its deficit 10% of GDP; Spanish debt was 69% of GDP, … Continue reading
The Natural Rate Hypothesis has been around us for … since Freidman presidential adress (1968?). Economists know that the definition lies on shaky grounds.