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Liberty Street Economics
88 posts on "Labor Economics"March 04, 2020
Searching for Higher Job Satisfaction
Job-to-job transitions—those job moves that occur without an intervening spell of unemployment—have been discussed in the literature as a driver of wage growth. Economists typically describe the labor market as a “job ladder” that workers climb by moving to jobs with higher pay, stronger wage growth, and better benefits. It is important, however, that these transitions not be interspersed with periods of unemployment, both because such downtime could lead to a loss in accumulated human capital and because “on-the-job search” is more effective than searching while unemployed. Yet little is known about what leads workers to search for jobs while employed. This post aims to shed light on one such possible mechanism—namely, how current job satisfaction is related to job search behavior.
Posted by Blog Author at 7:30 AM in Expectations, Labor Economics, Labor Market, Wages | Permalink | Comments (0)March 03, 2020
Introduction to Heterogeneity Series II: Labor Market Outcomes
While average outcomes serve as important yardsticks for how the economy is doing, understanding heterogeneity—how outcomes vary across a population—is key to understanding both the whole picture and the implications of any given policy. Following our six-part look at heterogeneity in October 2019, we now turn our focus to heterogeneity in the labor market—the subject of four posts set for release tomorrow morning. Average labor market statistics mask a lot of underlying variability—disparities that factor into labor market dynamics. While we have written about labor market heterogeneity before, this series is an attempt to pull together in a cohesive way new insights on the labor market and highlight details that are not immediately obvious when we study aggregate labor market statistics.
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Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Human Capital, Inequality, Labor Economics, Regional Analysis, Unemployment, Wages | Permalink | Comments (2)December 17, 2019
Growth Has Slowed across the Region
At today’s regional economic press briefing, we highlighted some recent softening in the tri-state regional economy (New York, Northern New Jersey, and Fairfield County, Connecticut)—a noteworthy contrast from our briefing a year ago, when economic growth and job creation were fairly brisk. We also showed that Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which are part of the New York Fed’s district, both continue to face major challenges but have made significant economic progress following the catastrophic hurricanes of 2017.
October 07, 2019
Introduction to Heterogeneity Series: Understanding Causes and Implications of Various Inequalities
Economic analysis is often geared toward understanding the average effects of a given policy or program. Likewise, economic policies frequently target the average person or firm. While averages are undoubtedly useful reference points for researchers and policymakers, they don’t tell the whole story: it is vital to understand how the effects of economic trends and government policies vary across geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic boundaries. It is also important to assess the underlying causes of the various inequalities we observe around us, whether they are related to income, health, or any other set of indicators. Starting today, we are running a series of six blog posts (apart from this introductory post), each of which focuses on an interesting case of heterogeneity in the United States.
Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Education, Household Finance, Human Capital, Inequality, Labor Economics, Labor Market, Regional Analysis | Permalink | Comments (0)October 02, 2019
U.S. Virgin Islands Struggle While Puerto Rico Rebounds
Two years after hurricanes Irma and Maria wreaked havoc on Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the two territories’ economies have moved in very different directions. When the hurricanes struck, both were already in long economic slumps and had significant fiscal problems. As of the summer of 2019, however, Puerto Rico’s economy was showing considerable signs of improvement since the hurricanes, while the Virgin Islands’ economy remained mired in a deep slump through the end of 2018, though signs of a nascent recovery have emerged in 2019. In this post, we assess the contrasting trends of these two economies since the hurricanes and attempt to explain the forces driving these trends.
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Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Employment, Labor Economics, Labor Market, Puerto Rico, Regional Analysis, Wages | Permalink | Comments (2)September 25, 2019
Minimum Wage Impacts along the New York-Pennsylvania Border
The federal minimum wage, currently set at $7.25 per hour, has remained unchanged for the longest stretch of time since its 1938 inception under the Fair Labor Standards Act. With the real purchasing power of the federal minimum wage eroded by inflation, many states and municipalities have raised their local minimum wages. As of July 2019, fourteen states plus the District of Columbia—home to 35 percent of Americans—have minimum wages above $10 per hour, as do numerous localities scattered across other states. New York is among a handful of states—along with California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey—that has passed legislation to eventually increase minimum wages to $15 per hour. While New York began raising its minimum wage from $7.25 per hour in 2014, neighboring Pennsylvania has left its minimum wage unchanged at the federal floor. Minimum-wage variation between contiguous states has allowed researchers to evaluate the respective impacts on employment and average earnings. In this post, we gauge the effect of New York’s recent minimum-wage hikes by comparing low-wage sectors in counties along the New York-Pennsylvania border.
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Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Employment, Labor Economics, Regional Analysis | Permalink | Comments (5)September 23, 2019
Just Released: Transitions to Unemployment Tick Up in Latest SCE Labor Market Survey
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s July 2019 SCE Labor Market Survey shows a year-over-year rise in employer-to-employer transitions as well as an increase in transitions into unemployment. Satisfaction with promotion opportunities and wage compensation was largely unchanged, while satisfaction with non-wage benefits retreated. Regarding expectations, the average expected wage offer (conditional on receiving one) and the average reservation wage—the lowest wage at which respondents would be willing to accept a new job—both increased. Expectations regarding job transitions were largely stable.
Posted by Blog Author at 11:00 AM in Labor Economics, Labor Market, Unemployment, Wages | Permalink | Comments (0)July 10, 2019
Did the Value of a College Degree Decline during the Great Recession?
In an earlier post, we studied how educational attainment affects labor market outcomes and earnings inequality. In this post, we investigate whether these labor market effects were preserved across the last business cycle: Did students with certain types of educational attainment weather the recession better?
Continue reading "Did the Value of a College Degree Decline during the Great Recession?" »
Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Education, Employment, Great Recession, Human Capital, Inequality, Labor Economics, Labor Market, Recession, Wages | Permalink | Comments (5)June 03, 2019
The Cost of College Continues to Climb
First of two posts
College is much more expensive than it used to be. Tuition for a bachelor’s degree has more than tripled from an (inflation-adjusted) average of about $5,000 per year in the 1970s to around $18,000 today. For many parents and prospective students, this high and rising tuition has raised concerns about whether getting a college degree is still worth it—a question we addressed in a 2014 study. In this post, we update that study, estimating the cost of college in terms of both out-of-pocket expenses, like tuition, and opportunity costs, the wages one gives up to attend school. We find that the cost of college has increased sharply over the past several years, though tuition increases are not the primary driver. Rather, opportunity costs have increased substantially as the wages of those without a college degree have climbed due to a strong labor market. In a follow-up post, we will consider whether college is still “worth it” by weighing the benefits relative to the costs to estimate the return to a college degree.
Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Education, Labor Economics, Labor Market | Permalink | Comments (5)February 06, 2019
Where Are Manufacturing Jobs Coming Back?
Second of two posts
As we outlined in our previous post, the United States lost close to six million manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2010 but since then has gained back almost one million. In this post, we take a closer look at the geographic dimension of this modest rebound in manufacturing jobs. While job losses during the 2000s were fairly widespread across the country, manufacturing employment gains since then have been concentrated in particular parts of the country. Indeed, these gains were especially large in “auto alley”—a narrow motor vehicle production corridor stretching from Michigan south to Alabama—while much of the Northeast continued to shed manufacturing jobs. Closer to home, many of the metropolitan areas in the New York-Northern New Jersey region have been left out of this rebound and are continuing to shed manufacturing jobs, though Albany has bucked this trend with one of the strongest performances in the country.
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Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Labor Economics, Labor Market, New Jersey, New York, New York City, Regional Analysis | Permalink | Comments (0)About the BlogLiberty Street Economics features insight and analysis from New York Fed economists working at the intersection of research and policy. Launched in 2011, the blog takes its name from the Bank’s headquarters at 33 Liberty Street in Manhattan’s Financial District.
The editors are Michael Fleming, Andrew Haughwout, Thomas Klitgaard, and Asani Sarkar, all economists in the Bank’s Research Group.
The views expressed are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the New York Fed or the Federal Reserve System.
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