Payrolls rose 136,000 last month and the unemployment rate dipped to 3.5 percent, its lowest rate since the late 1960s. Though the payroll number missed analysts’ expectations (~145,000), the more reliable 3-month average came in at a healthy 157,000, strong enough to put downward pressure on unemployment (the prior two months of payroll data were… Read more

[Note: this is draft of a forthcoming paper for CBPP’s Full Employment Project. I posted it here first as I will be referencing its findings at a Brookings inflation conference on Thurs, Oct 3.] By Jared Bernstein and Keith Bentele[i] Introduction The benefits to running a hot labor market continue to be evident both in… Read more

Google tells me that today would have been BB King’s 94’th birthday, so I got my booty over to YouTube to queue up one of my fav BB jams–Let’s Get Down to Business! BB crushes it, of course, but also dig busy-yet-funky electric bass playing by Jerry Jemmott. “Whatever made us breakup baby I don’t… Read more

The Census income and earnings data sometimes have a confusing characteristic that is not uncommon in these sorts of data, especially in periods of tight labor markets, as was 2018. The issue has to do with changes in medians from one year to the next. For example, the data that came out this morning showed… Read more

This morning, the Census Bureau released new data on health insurance coverage, poverty, and middle-class incomes. While the data are for last year, they shine an important light on key aspects of families’ living standards that we don’t get from the more up-to-date macro-indicators, like GDP and unemployment. As the economic recovery that began over… Read more