Download or read book The Shadow Margins of Labor Market Slack written by R. Jason Faberman and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We use a mix of new and existing data to develop the Aggregate Hours Gap (AHG), a novel measure of labor market underutilization. Our measure differentiates individuals by detailed categories of labor market participation and uses data on their desired work hours as a measure of their potential labor supply. We show that desired hours vary widely by demographics and detailed labor force status, and that the gap between desired and actual work hours is strongly positively correlated with reported search effort. The Aggregate Hours Gap suggests a more sluggish labor market recovery since the Great Recession than either the official unemployment rate or alternative measures of labor market underutilization. Modest amounts of underutilization among the part-time employed and a substantial degree of underutilization among those out of the labor force account for the disparity. The Aggregate Hours Gap also does well in accounting for wage movements over our sample period.

Download or read book Labor Market Slack and Monetary Policy written by David G. Blanchflower and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of a severe recession and a sluggish recovery, labor market slack cannot be gauged solely in terms of the conventional measure of the unemployment rate (that is, the number of individuals who are not working at all and actively searching for a job). Rather, assessments of the employment gap should reflect the incidence of underemployment (that is, people working part time who want a full-time job) and the extent of hidden unemployment (that is, people who are not actively searching but who would rejoin the workforce if the job market were stronger). In this paper, we examine the evolution of U.S. labor market slack and show that underemployment and hidden unemployment currently account for the bulk of the U.S. employment gap. Next, using state-level data, we find strong statistical evidence that each of these forms of labor market slack exerts significant downward pressure on nominal wages. Finally, we consider the monetary policy implications of the employment gap in light of prescriptions from Taylor-style benchmark rules.

Download or read book How Much Slack Remains in the Labor Market written by Marc Labonte and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 4 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Moving the Needle written by Katherine S. Newman and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-04 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Most research on poverty focuses on the damage that persistent unemployment causes for individuals, families, and neighborhoods. But what happens when jobs are plentiful and workers are hard to come by? Persistent labor shortages became the norm in 2022, but there have been a number of periods in American history where tight labor markets prevailed. Moving the Needle examines what happens when conditions favorable to workers create market pressures that boost wages at the bottom, improve benefits, pull the unemployed from the sidelines to the center of a burgeoning job market, lengthen job ladders, and dampen credentialism. Utilizing 79 years of quantitative and historical data, as well as fieldwork among employers, jobseekers, and long-time residents of poor neighborhoods, this book explores how profoundly positive tight labor markets are for labor and recommends policies that would keep that momentum moving when the conditions that spur it forward no longer hold"--

Download or read book The Persistence of Slack and Tight Labor Markets written by Karl Ove Moene and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Estimating Labor Market Slack U S 1994 2019 written by John Komlos and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: U3, the official unemployment rate, is an inadequate gauge of labor-market slack and the extent to which it misinforms varies substantially over the business cycle. The U6 unemployment rate is usually about 4 percentage points above U3. However, during the Great Recession it exceeded U3 by 7 percentage points for three years. Moreover, the U6-U3 gap is magnified among disadvantaged groups such as minorities, youth, and for the less educated. For instance, in January 2011 the U6-U3 gap among African American youth was 17.9 pps as U6 climbed to 47.5% and was similarly large among African Americans without a high-school diploma.

Download or read book Additional Slack in the Economy written by Katharine Bradbury and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This public policy brief examines labor force participation rates in this recession and recovery and compares them with the cyclical patterns in earlier business cycles. Measured relative to the business cycle peak in March 2001, labor force participation rates almost four years later have not recovered as much as usual, and the discrepancies are large. Among age-by-sex groups, the participation shortfall is especially pronounced at young and prime ages: Only for men and women age 55 and older has participation risen more than is usual four years after the business cycle peak. The brief examines explanations and different recovery scenarios for various groups - older workers, women, teens. Depending on the scenario, the current labor force shortfall ranges from 1.6 million to 5.1 million men and women. With 7.9 million people currently unemployed, the addition of these hypothetical participants would raise the unemployment rate by 1 to 3-plus percentage points. Current low rates of labor market participation thus potentially represent considerable slack in the U.S. labor market. This brief is based on materials presented in briefings to the President and Academic Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in March and April 2005.

Download or read book Wages and Labor Market Slack written by David G. Blanchflower and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Does Slack Influence Public and Private Labor Market Interactions written by Ana Lamo and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We empirically analyze the impact of public employment and wages' shocks on private labor market outcomes by studying if policies operate differently in periods of economic slack than in normal times. We use local projection methods and focus on the Spanish and euro area aggregate cases. We find that the degree of economic slack is key to determine: (i) if public employment crowds-out private employment, and (ii) the degree and extent of public wage influence on the private sector.In addition, we find that the specific features of the economy also count. In the case of Spain, when fiscal consolidation is implemented at times of economic distress, the contractionary effects of public employment cuts appear more damaging for the economy than those of public wage cuts, while the opposite happens for the euro area as a whole. These differences are likely to be related to specific features of the labor markets in both cases.

Download or read book Ghetto Underemployment Structural Labor Market Problems in a Slack Economy written by Philip M. Genty and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 77 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Does Slack Influence Public and Private Labor Market Interactions written by and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We empirically analyze the impact of public employment and wages' shocks on private labor market outcomes by studying if policies operate differently in periods of economic slack than in normal times. We use local projection methods and focus on the Spanish and euro area aggregate cases. We find that the degree of economic slack is key to determine: (i) if public employment crowds-out private employment, and (ii) the degree and extent of public wage influence on the private sector. In addition, we find that the specific features of the economy also count. In the case of Spain, when fiscal consolidation is implemented at times of economic distress, the contractionary effects of public employment cuts appear more damaging for the economy than those of public wage cuts, while the opposite happens for the euro area as a whole. These differences are likely to be related to specific features of the labor markets in both cases.

Download or read book Has the Willingness to Work Fallen During the Covid Pandemic written by R. Jason Faberman and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We examine the effect of the Covid pandemic on willingness to work along both the extensive and intensive margins of labor supply. Special survey questions in the Job Search Supplement of the Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) allow us to elicit information about individuals' desired work hours for the 2013-2021 period. Using these questions, along with workers' actual labor market participation, we construct a labor market underutilization measure, the Aggregate Hours Gap (AHG), following Faberman et al. (2020). The AHG captures changes in labor market underutilization for the full population along both the extensive and intensive margins using data on desired work hours as a measure of their potential labor supply. We find that the sharp increase in the AHG during the Covid pandemic essentially disappeared by the end of 2021. We also document a sharp decline in desired work hours during the pandemic that persists through the end of 2021 and is roughly double the drop in the labor force participation rate. Ignoring the decline in desired hours overstates the degree of underutilization by 2.5 percentage points (12.5%). Our findings suggest that, as of 2021Q4, the labor market is tighter than suggested by the unemployment rate and the adverse labor supply effect of the pandemic is more pronounced than implied by the labor force participation rate. These discrepancies underscore the importance of taking into account the intensive margin for both labor market underutilization and potential labor supply.

Download or read book Work and the Social Safety Net written by Douglas J. Besharov and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For many decades, American liberals have pointed to Europe's social welfare systems as a model for the US. As Senator Bernie Sanders famously said: "I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn what they have accomplished for their working people" (Moody, 2016)"--

Download or read book The US Labour Market written by Robert Fay and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 11 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the US unemployment rate being close to estimates of the non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU), measures of underemployment remain elevated, which could be an indication of remaining labour market slack. The shares of involuntary part-time workers and long-term unemployment are high relative to the current stage of the business cycle, suggesting available labour inputs are being underutilized. Improvement in these areas could meaningfully increase US labour utilization and support economic growth. Another large potential source of labour market slack exists outside the labour force caused by the relatively low participation rate, which has fallen by more than 3 percentage points since 2007. Most analysis, including that in this note, finds that the aging population is an important factor behind this decline, indicating that there is less slack than implied by the drop in the headline participation rate. However, there is considerable uncertainty about whether the decline in participation unrelated to aging is driven by structural or cyclical phenomena and is therefore representative of slack. Nevertheless, a review of the historical experience suggests that a sizable number of persons outside the labour force could be "activated" and drawn back into the market under much "hotter" labour market conditions. But further research is needed to assess whether the historical relationship is a relevant guide in the current context.

Download or read book Automation and the Future of Work written by Aaron Benanav and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A consensus-shattering account of automation technologies and their effect on workplaces and the labor market In this consensus-shattering account of automation technologies, Aaron Benanav investigates the economic trends that will shape our working lives far into the future. Silicon Valley titans, politicians, techno-futurists, and social critics have united in arguing that we are on the cusp of an era of rapid technological automation, heralding the end of work as we know it. But does the muchdiscussed “rise of the robots” really explain the long-term decline in the demand for labor? Automation and the Future of Work uncovers the deep weaknesses of twenty-first-century capitalism and the reasons why the engine of economic growth keeps stalling. Equally important, Benanav goes on to salvage from automation discourse its utopian content: the positive vision of a world without work. What social movements, he asks, are required to propel us into post-scarcity if technological innovation alone can’t deliver it? In response to calls for a permanent universal basic income that would maintain a growing army of redundant workers, he offers a groundbreaking counterproposal.

Download or read book An Off Kilter Expansion written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A few weeks back, on a late July morning, the U.S. government released two statistical reports that, taken together, provide an excellent microcosm of the current U.S. job market. One report showed that the overall economy was expanding smartly, suggesting the four-year-old economic expansion was solidly on track. The other report, however, painted a very different picture. This report--on wages and compensation-- revealed that average wage growth had yet again failed to beat inflation. In fact, the wage growth cited in the report was tied with the previous three quarters' results for the worst on record. This report presents a set of wage and compensation trends in detail and then explains the underlying factors driving these trends. The conclusion drawn from this analysis is that, despite what appears to be a low unemployment rate, considerable slack remains in the job market. Earlier research shows that a truly tight job market plays the critical role of broadly distributing the benefits of growth (Bernstein and Baker 2003). Specifically, in a full-employment job market, with the number of jobs available matched fairly tightly to the number of workers, employers tend to bid compensation up to recruit and keep the workers they need. That mechanism, inoperative thus far in this expansion, is one way of ensuring that the benefits of growth are fairly shared.

Download or read book Mismatch Unemployment written by Aysegul Sahin and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We develop a framework where mismatch between vacancies and job seekers across sectors translates into higher unemployment by lowering the aggregate job-finding rate. We use this framework to measure the contribution of mismatch to the recent rise in U.S. unemployment by exploiting two sources of cross-sectional data on vacancies, JOLTS and HWOL, a new database covering the universe of online U.S. job advertisements. Mismatch across industries and occupations explains at most 1/3 of the total observed increase in the unemployment rate, whereas geographical mismatch plays no apparent role. The share of the rise in unemployment explained by occupational mismatch is increasing in the education level.