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Good News on AI and Jobs
Will AI cause mass unemployment? Alarming news headlines and social media conversation often give that impression. But economists tend to be more sanguine. They know that while technological advance...
View ArticleThe Paycheck Protection Program and Unemployment Benefit Claims
By Michael R. Strain I recently highlighted two new papers on the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The evidence on PPP’s effects is continuing to grow, and I want to draw attention to another...
View ArticleAmericans Should Feel Deep Economic Nostalgia for . . . 2019
By James Pethokoukis With his proposed $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan, President Biden promises to “reimagine and rebuild a new economy.” Hmm. That kind of, shall we say, “ambitious” talk from...
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Why I Would Vote for ‘Nomadland’ as Best Picture
By James Pethokoukis Do 71 percent of workers at the Amazon warehouse facility in Bessemer, Alabama, misunderstand what’s in their best economic interest? Pro-union activists wouldn’t put it that way,...
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So You Want Your Political Party to Be a Workers Party. What Does That Even...
By James Pethokoukis The notion of the Republican Party — or any party, really — being a “workers party” is conceptually confusing. That word, “worker.” Let’s think about it. Sure, I am a worker. I...
View ArticleThinking About Amazon, ‘Nomadland,’ and the Shared Value Created by...
By James Pethokoukis This is a big quarterly earnings week for many well-known tech companies, including Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Facebook, and Twitter. But for Amazon, specifically, it’s already...
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How Policymakers Can Improve Housing Affordability: My Long-read Q&A with...
By James Pethokoukis and Emily Hamilton Are housing regulations negatively impacting economic growth and opportunity in America? How can policymakers solve this problem? Which cities provide a model...
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5 Questions for Emily Hamilton on Opportunities for Better Housing Policy
By James Pethokoukis and Emily Hamilton How has housing affordability gotten to be such a problem? What is its broader effect on the US economy? Has the Biden administration proposed policies that...
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How Jobless Benefits Might Have Affected That Weak April Jobs Report
By James Pethokoukis If you obtained all your economics knowledge from Twitter, you might believe several interesting things. Such as: Washington could (a) raise corporate tax rates, capital gains...
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How Does Raising the Minimum Wage Affect the Labor Market? My Long-read Q&A...
By James Pethokoukis and Jeffrey Clemens President Biden’s original American Rescue Plan would have increased the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour from the current $7.25. Ultimately, that part of...
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5 Questions for Jeffrey Clemens on the Minimum Wage and How to Help Low-wage...
By James Pethokoukis and Jeffrey Clemens Should policymakers raise the federal minimum wage? How would the labor market be affected if we did? Are there other ways of helping those at the bottom of...
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Don’t Believe the Assumption That Federal Infrastructure Spending Will Create...
By Richard Geddes By advocating that trillions of dollars be spent on infrastructure as one part of a broader American Jobs Plan, the Biden administration has signaled a strong desire to pass an...
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Government Accountability Office Report Offers More Questions Than Answers on...
A new report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office titled “Preliminary Information on Potential Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Receipt of Unemployment Insurance Benefits during the...
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Will the End of the Pandemic Mean the Rise of the Robots?
By James Pethokoukis If business has been using the COVID-19 pandemic as opportunity (or maybe cover) for a massive automation binge, how come there are a record 9.3 million job openings? It’s a data...
View ArticleTechnological Progress and the ‘good Jobs’ Trap
By James Pethokoukis I couldn’t agree more with this sentence from the excellent 2019 book Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream by...
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Is the Pandemic Recession Over? My Long-read Q&A with Michael Strain
By James Pethokoukis and Michael Strain The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed an economic downturn on the United States, forcing workers and businesses to adapt. Now that Americans are getting vaccinated...
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5 Questions for Michael Strain on COVID-19 and the US Economy
By James Pethokoukis and Michael Strain When the COVID-19 pandemic struck the United States in 2020, public policy experts talked of freezing the economy until the health crisis was over and then...
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How Has the Pandemic Affected American Entrepreneurship? My Long-read Q&A...
By James Pethokoukis and John Haltiwanger Before the COVID-19 pandemic, American dynamism was in decline, with business creation and labor market fluidity consistently falling since the year 2000. How...
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America’s Labor Shortage and the ‘Great Resignation’: My Long-read Q&A with...
By James Pethokoukis and Michael Strain As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, millions of Americans are quitting their jobs in a labor market that’s already short on workers. On top of this “Great...
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5 Questions for Michael Strain on the Labor Market
By James Pethokoukis and Michael Strain Since the economic downturn of the COVID-19 pandemic, production has rebounded to pre-pandemic trends. But the effects of the pandemic are ongoing in the US...
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Thinking About the March Jobs Report
By James Pethokoukis During the worst of the pandemic — especially during the shutdown and the months soon afterward — there was a lot of buzz about turning government payments into a universal basic...
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Are We in the Post-Pandemic Economy? My Long-Read Q&A with Michael Strain
By James Pethokoukis and Michael Strain The Federal Reserve recently announced a 75-basis-point rate hike—the largest since 1994—in an attempt to curb inflation. The Fed’s aim is to thread the needle...
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Health Care Jobs Gap Remains Serious
By Alex Brill and Grant M. Seiter Employment in the health care sector increased by 56,700 in June, more than double the average monthly pace in this sector during the last year, according to last...
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Health Care Workforce Shortages: An Updated Look
Last week, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing titled “Examining Health Care Workforce Shortages: Where Do We Go From Here?” When we first wrote about this...
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