Adam Fishbein

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Articles

December 2024 Jobs Preview: What to Expect

Jan 8, 2025 | cepr.net | Adam Fishbein

The November employment report again gave us a confusing picture, with the establishment survey and household survey going in opposite directions. The establishment survey showed a strong gain of 227,000 jobs. With the upward revisions to the prior two months’ data, this brought the average gain for the last three months to 173,000. By contrast, the household survey showed a rise in the unemployment rate to 4.2 percent and a drop in employment of 351,000.
Biden’s Economic Legacy

Jan 8, 2025 | cepr.net | Adam Fishbein

Catherine Rampell gave a rather gloomy assessment of Biden’s economic legacy in a Washington Post column this week. Unfortunately, I am inclined to agree with much of it, but I think she missed the biggest story: the commitment to full employment. Let’s start with the topics where she is largely right. First, Biden was able to accomplish little in terms of expanding the social welfare state. He did have the expanded child tax credit, which cut child poverty in half, but ended after 2021.
The Faircloth Amendment Blocks the Construction of Affordable Housing: It Should be Repealed

Dec 11, 2024 | cepr.net | Adam Fishbein

Randall Irvin has been waiting for public housing in Chicago for six years, and his situation is not that unusual. For example, there are over 100,000 families on San Antonio’s waitlist for public housing. In Chicago, there were more than 200,000 families on the waitlist in 2023. Public housing waiting lists are extremely long because there is an inadequate supply – and a 1998 amendment to federal housing law is a significant barrier to building new housing.
Corporate Income Tax Collections Rise When They Are Not Voluntary

Dec 11, 2024 | cepr.net | Adam Fishbein

As Donald Trump prepares to embark on another round of MAGA tax cuts it is worth a quick review of the corporate side of the last one, and the Biden administration’s efforts to reverse the revenue loss. One of the unheralded successes of the Biden administration was increasing corporate income tax collections as a share of profits.
Economy Adds 227,000 Jobs as Unemployment Edges Up to 4.2 Percent

Dec 6, 2024 | cepr.net | Adam Fishbein

The November jobs report gave a somewhat mixed picture of the labor market. On the positive side, we saw robust job growth in the establishment survey with an increase of 227,000 jobs, up sharply from a weak 36,000 gain reported (revised up from 12,000) for October. On the downside, the unemployment rate edged higher to 4.2 percent. The November number and October number really have to be taken together.
Trump's Tariffs Are a Distraction That Can Continue for a While

Dec 4, 2024 | cepr.net | Adam Fishbein

The GuardianSee article at original site“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff, and it’s my favorite word,” said Donald Trump last month. Pundits, politicians and financial markets are trying to figure out why, since he announced a week ago that he would impose tariffs on the United States’s three biggest trading partners: 25% for Mexico and Canada, and 10% for China. One theory is that tariffs can be a beautiful distraction.
Four Big Flaws in Trump’s Threat to China Over the Dollar

Dec 4, 2024 | cepr.net | Adam Fishbein

Last week Donald Trump made a bizarre threat on his Truth Social site that he would impose 100 percent taxes on the imports (tariffs) from any country that doesn’t take a pledge to not move away from the dollar as its reserve currency. Donald Trump’s Big Fear Exists Only in His Imagination The threat was bizarre for several reasons.
November 2024 Jobs Preview: What to Expect

Dec 2, 2024 | cepr.net | Adam Fishbein

The October jobs report came in somewhat weaker than had generally been expected, with the establishments adding just 12,000 jobs. However, this weakness was explained in part by the strike against Boeing, which idled 33,000 workers directly, and a number of others in supplier industries. There were also two major hurricanes that hit Florida and the Southeast before the reference week, which also almost certainly had an impact on employment. These effects will be largely reversed in November.
Contrary to What the Washington Post Tells Readers, China is Doing a Huge Amount to Combat Global Warming

Nov 29, 2024 | cepr.net | Adam Fishbein

The Washington Post had a bizarre article last week in which it questioned whether China was doing much to combat global warming. While the piece noted China’s efforts to portray itself as a world leader in this effort, it commented:“But China’s global climate leadership bid is complicated by its own enormous emissions.
Capitalism and Democracy: The Market is Far More Flexible than Christopher Caldwell Imagines

Nov 29, 2024 | cepr.net | Adam Fishbein

New York Times columnist Christopher Caldwell devoted his Thanksgiving piece to describing the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck’s views on capitalism and democracy. I have not read much of Streeck’s work, but as recounted by Caldwell, he gets many of the basic facts about the U.S. economy badly wrong. According to Caldwell’s account, capitalists were willing to sacrifice profits in the decades after World War II for stability.