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Recent quotes:
Morning Must-Read: Nick Bunker: How Much Does Job Search Matter for Job Switching? - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
We often assume the one doing the searching is the worker….
…Carlos Carrillo-Tudella… Bart Hobijn and Patryk Perkowski… and Ludo Visschers… look at the Contingent Worker Supplement to the CPS…. More than 67 percent of workers who were hired didn’t look for a job in the previous three months. So less than one-third of total hires were workers who were actively searching…. About 26 percent of overall hires were of employed workers who weren’t searching for a job. Another 42 percent of new hires were workers without jobs who weren’t looking for a job…. These results don’t mean that searching for a job is futile…. Looking for a job is incredibly important for individual workers…. [But] employers are the ones [mostly] conducting a search…
Afternoon Must-Read: Nick Bunker: Are recoveries from Financial Crises Always Slow? - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
A large financial crisis doesn’t necessarily mean a large economic downturn has to happen. Economic events aren’t forces that sweep over us, but things that we can react to and very possibly control.
Nighttime Must-Read: Nick Bunker: One Slack Measure to Rule Them All? - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
How about prime-age EPOP?… It works here. Looks to me that the up-tick in ECI growth seems to be happening around the same time as the up-tick in the growth of the prime-age EPOP…. I thought it was interesting how well prime-age EPOP did and that it tracked ECI so well.
Evening Must-Read: Nick Bunker: The Steep Path Forward for Unionization - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Increased unionization in the United States would almost certainly reduce wage and income inequality. But the pathway to a higher rate is steep.
Morning Must-Read: Nick Bunker: The Future of Retirement Savings - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Can we finally all admit that even though the defined-benefit pension system was inadequate the 401(k) system is worse? And that we need not a smaller but a larger Social Security system?
Nick Bunker: The Future of Retirement Savings: “Devlin-Foltz… Henriques, and… Sabelhaus…
…focus… on… participation…. The participation rate among working-age households… was close to 80 percent between 1989 and 2007. But… has dropped to… 75 percent…. [And] younger workers’ participation rate has fallen below the level of previous generations of young workers—today’s young workers aren’t saving as much younger workers in years past… [with] the biggest decline… among workers in the bottom half…
Over at Value-Added: Nick Bunker: What to Worry About on the Supply Side - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Nick Bunker: What to Worry About on the Supply Side: “The… crisis in 2008 and 2009 caused a massive decline in demand…. Perhaps it is [now] time to consider the potential problems on the supply side of the U.S. economy…. Greg Ip does just that…
…issues with both the growth rate of productivity and the supply of labor… John Fernald… on the lack of new advancements in information technology… Stephen G. Cecchetti… and Enisse Kharroubi… [on the] over-bloated financial sector… Equitable Growth’s Robert Lynch… [on] educational inequality…. Supply and demand aren’t… easily untangled…. With the lack of acceleration of wage growth, the labor market appears to still have some slack…. Short-term considerations can help alleviate our long-run problems…. We can’t forget about the supply-side problems that lurk further downstream. Our future prosperity depends on it.
Morning Must-Read: Nick Bunker: Income Inequality Over the Business Cycle - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
I must say, Stephen Rose used to do very good work. But more and more I find that the stuff he puts out these days has a “gotcha” in it–a decision as to what to look at that is debatable, that shapes his conclusions massively, and that he does not warn me about his importance. Having to dig for what the “gotcha” is in each case is time consuming, boring, and annoying. I think he should stop.
Vir spectabilis Nick Bunker does the heavy lifting:
Nick Bunker: Income Inequality Over the Business Cycle: “Stephen Rose argues that income inequality…
…has not risen since the end of the Great Recession… takes aim at research by University of California-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez showing that 95 percent of the income gains from 2009 to 2012 were captured by the top 1 percent of earners… assert[s claims]… inequality has risen since the Great Recession… based upon a ‘statistical gimmick.’
Rose… look[s] at changes in incomes since 2007, the peak of the last business cycle…. Saez and… Piketty show… income excluding capital gains… [of] the top 1 percent dropped from 18.3 percent in 2007 to 16.7 percent in 2009…. During economic expansions, workers at the bottom of the income ladder see very large gains and those at the top see large gains as well. Those in the middle miss out. And during recessions, the incomes at both ends lose the most…. By starting his measurement from the peak of the last business cycle in 2007, Rose includes the years that have the most income reduction for those at the top. But the expansion beginning in 2009… is not over….
Yes, if 2007 is the benchmark year, incomes at the top have declined. And yes, if 2009 is the benchmark year, incomes at the top have increased dramatically…. What isn’t reasonable is using a peak as a benchmark to claim inequality hasn’t increased over an incomplete business cycle…
