So, New York State (who is that, exactly?) passes an historic increase in the minimum wage. It argues, implicitly, that raising costs to $15 per hour will benefit workers and not have the adverse consequences economists warn about. Of course, there are myriad adverse consequences, not just unemployment, so keep your eye on the ball. […]
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Posted in labor markets on Mar 28th, 2016
In today’s inbox: Rethinking Deindustrialization by Andrew B. Bernard, Valerie Smeets, Frederic Warzynski – NBER Working Paper #22114 Manufacturing in high-income countries is on the decline and Denmark is no exception. Manufacturing employment and the number of firms have been shrinking as a share of the total and in absolute levels. This paper uses a rich linked […]
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In 1960, 0.9% of the American population received disability benefits. In other words, 1 out of every 111 people you encountered received disability. Today, 5.9% of the American population received disability benefit. In other words, 1 out of every 17 people you encounter is receiving disability. Note that Americans are living longer, cars and driving […]
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Borjas strikes back in the next round of paper(s) on the impact of the Mariel Boatlift on American wages. You would not be shocked to find that he finds that the immigrants were harmful to Floridians: This fundamental error in data construction (wintercow: in the Round Three paper) contaminates the analysis and helps hide the […]
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In the latest paper on the impacts of minimum wage increases on the labor market opportunities for the targeted populations: (wait, before I post the findings, you can obviously dismiss them because I have an agenda, and second, I remind you again that even if the findings below showed the opposite, that says little about […]
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Posted in labor markets on Sep 7th, 2015
This one is due to folks on “my side.” You’ll see much written by folks either for or against unions. Fine. Let’s not go there. But what really does a disservice to serious engagement is the need to use a data point to make a larger point that may not warrant it, and to continue […]
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I’d like my readers and students to briefly examine the economic literature to determine what the “consensus” is on these two questions. What is the economic incidence of the payroll tax and other “benefits” that are mandated to be paid by employers to employees? For example, the total payroll tax amount imposed by the government is 15.3%, […]
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Posted in Disingenuous, labor markets on Jul 7th, 2015
A post from Lawrence Mishel of the EPI repeats the very often-cited idea that the typical worker is not doing much better today: The issue of wage stagnation, however, should focus on what the vast majority of workers have been experiencing for most of the post-1979 period. Hourly wages, inflation-adjusted, grew only 0.2 percent annually […]
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This result was surprising, sure to get lots of news coverage: It shows that despite a rise in measured capital-labor ratios, labor-augmenting technical change in the US has been sufficiently rapid that effective capital-labor ratios have actually fallen in the sectors and industries that account for the largest portion of the declining labor share in income since 1980 Paper […]
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Posted in Inequality, labor markets on May 8th, 2015
Check out this paper on one of the major challenges facing minorities in poverty: And these are findings for the United States. What do you think the impact of widespread automobile ownership around the world would be not just on employment, but on general levels of satisfaction? Pardon the pun, but your mileage may vary […]
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