I’ve had a couple of WaPo posts out to which I’ve been meaning to link. This first one, on the warp speed of norm erosion in the Trump era, has the interesting feature that its shelf life was vastly shortened by the Mooch getting the bootch later in the very day I posted. Of course,… Read more
Archive for the ‘Jobs’ Category
Reax to NYT oped
I’ve got an oped in this AM’s NYT on four big ideas that I see Democrats, and not just traditional progressives, but also centrists, converging around. –a universal child allowance; –a $15 minimum wage; –a large expansion of the EITC; –direct job creation. Here are some responses and pushbacks. Much of what folks raised are… Read more
Jobs report: Some softening in May. Should the Fed hold off on next rate hike? I say…[read on]
Employers added only 138,000 jobs last month, well below expectations for 175,000. Revisions to payrolls for the prior two months reduced employment gains by 66,000. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3 percent, its lowest level since 2001, but for the wrong reason: labor force participation fell by two-tenths of a percent. In other words, this… Read more
Housing, justice, jobs, and the flat Phillips Curve: Racial discrimination and a possible role for the Fed
Over at WaPo. One attribute of the post is the link to Richard Rothstein’s important new book documenting the “unhidden policies” responsible for racial residential segregation. The rigor of his research creates a bullet proof case for a) the laws, covenants, and zoning practices that kept African-Americans in high-poverty areas, and b) the difficulty unwinding… Read more
April jobs report: Have we reached full employment??!!
April showers–it’s pouring in DC today (are the skies crying after the health care vote?)–brought job-market flowers, in the form of another solid jobs report. I’ll get to the topline numbers in a sec, but this note is going to be about the fundamental, Talmudic question: is the US job market at full employment? Payrolls… Read more