This article is roughly 24 hours late, but I do have additional points to the headline numbers. From the BLS: Nonfarm payroll employment edged down (-85,000) in December, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 10.0 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment fell in construction, manufacturing, and wholesale trade, while temporary […]

The BLS released its employment and labor force projections for the period 2008-2018. The report highlights a more diverse and slower growing labor force stemming from a falling labor-force participation rate. Some headline findings of the report are (bold font by yours truly): Total employment is projected to increase by 15.3 million, or 10.1 percent, […]

By Spencer (2009)   The issue of a jobless recovery is getting a lot of attention recently. I’ve found the best way to look at the issue is to compare the change in real growth and productivity over the long run. There have been three periods of different productivity trends in modern US economic history. […]

It has long been a standard claim of economics—iirc, Robert Lucas was the first to say it aloud, though it may have been Gary Becker*—that a man who marries his housekeeper lowers GDP. Apparently, Dubner and Levitt have taken this claim—along with their Rick James title**—to heart. Echidne has the details. A short sample: There […]

Robert Waldmann I’m not sure whether (more likely wherE) this has been noted in the literature, but wage differentials not due to differences in workers’ skill are enough to generate a business cycle. A verbal “model” after the jump. update: additional model with fixed capital added. The key reference from which this is not quite […]