Job Ladders and Careers

Fatih Karahan, Brendan Moore, and Serdar Ozkan



Workers in the United States experience vast differences in lifetime earnings. Individuals in the 90th percentile earn around seven times more than those in the 10th percentile, and those in the top percentile earn almost twenty times more. A large share of these differences arise over the course of people’s careers. What accounts for these vastly different outcomes in the labor market? Why do some individuals experience much steeper earnings profiles than others? Previous research has shown that the “job ladder”—in which workers obtain large pay increases when they switch to better jobs or when firms want to poach them—is important for wage growth. In this post, we investigate how job ladders differ across workers.

Just Released: Transitions to Unemployment Tick Up in Latest SCE Labor Market Survey

Gizem Kosar and Kyle Smith



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.

How Has Germany’s Economy Been Affected by the Recent Surge in Immigration?

Matthew Higgins and Thomas Klitgaard



Germany emerged as a leading destination for immigration around 2011, as the country’s labor market improved while unemployment climbed elsewhere in the European Union. A second wave began in 2015, with refugees from the Middle East adding to already heavy inflows from Eastern Europe. The demographic consequences of the surge in immigration include a renewed rise in Germany’s population and the stabilization of the country’s median age. The macroeconomic consequences are hard to measure but look promising, since per capita income growth has held up and unemployment has declined. Data on labor-market outcomes specific to immigrants are similarly favorable through 2015, but reveal challenges in how well the economy is adjusting to the second immigration wave.

Did Changes in Economic Expectations Foreshadow Swings in the 2018 Elections?

Olivier Armantier, Michael Neubauer, Daphne Skandalis, and Wilbert van der Klaauw

Second of two posts

In the months leading up to the 2018 midterm elections, were economic expectations in congressional districts about to elect a Republican similar to those in districts about to elect a Democrat? How did economic expectations evolve in districts where the party holding the House seat would switch? After examining the persistence of polarization in expectations using voting patterns from the presidential election in our previous post, we explore here how divergence in expectations may have foreshadowed the results of the midterm elections. Using the Survey of Consumer Expectations, we show that economic expectations deteriorated between 2016 and 2018 in districts that switched from Republican to Democratic control compared to districts that remained Republican.

Just Released: The New York Fed’s New Regional Economy Website

Jaison R. Abel, Jason Bram, Richard Deitz, and Jonathan Hastings

The New York Fed today unveiled a newly designed website on the regional economy that offers convenient access to a wide array of regional data, analysis, and research that the Bank makes available to the public. Focusing specifically on the Federal Reserve’s Second District, which includes New York State, Northern New Jersey, Southwestern Connecticut, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the new site also features information about the Bank's community engagement and outreach efforts across the region. With today’s release, we are providing new regional economic précis for local areas in our District—that is, short reports that give an overview of economic trends in each location; these reports will be updated regularly as new data are released.

Expecting the Unexpected: Job Losses and Household Spending

Fatih Karahan, Brendan Moore, and Laura Pilossoph



Unemployment risk constitutes one of the most significant sources of uncertainty facing workers in the United States. A large body of work has carefully documented that job loss may have long-term effects on one’s career, depressing earnings by as much as 20 percent after fifteen to twenty years. Given the severity of a job loss for earnings, an important question is how much such an event affects one’s standard of living during a spell of unemployment. This blog post explores how unemployment and expectations of job loss interact to affect household spending.

Just Released: Introducing the SCE Household Spending Survey

Gizem Kosar, Kyle Smith, and Wilbert van der Klaauw



Today we are releasing new data on individuals’ experiences and expectations regarding household spending. These data have been collected every four months since December 2014 as part of our Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE). The goal of this blog post is to introduce the SCE Household Spending Survey and highlight some of its features.

Just Released: New York State’s Community Colleges are Successfully Partnering with Employers

Jaison R. Abel, Tony Davis, Richard Deitz, and Edison Reyes



Community colleges frequently work with local employers to help shape the training of students and incumbent workers. This type of engagement has become an increasingly important strategy for community colleges to help students acquire the right skills for available jobs, and also helps local employers find and retain workers with the training they need. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York conducted a survey of community colleges in New York State with the goal of documenting the amount and types of these kinds of activities taking place. Our report, Employer Engagement by Community Colleges in New York State, summarizes the findings of our survey.

Just Released: Introducing the SCE Labor Market Survey

John J. Conlon, Gizem Kosar, Giorgio Topa, and Basit Zafar



The New York Fed for the first time released its Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) Labor Market Survey which focuses on individuals’ experiences and expectations in the labor market. These data have been collected every four months since March 2014 as part of the SCE. It is being introduced now because the module has enough historical data to reveal notable trends. In this post we introduce the SCE Labor Market Survey and highlight some of its features.

Hey, Economist! Is Now a Good Time to Be Graduating from College?

A Conversation with Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz



With the 2017 college graduation season in full swing, we thought it would be helpful to take stock of the job prospects for recent college graduates. Is now a good time to be graduating from college? Publications editor Trevor Delaney caught up with Jaison Abel and Richard Deitz, two economists in our Research and Statistics Group, to discuss some of their work on the labor market for recent college graduates.