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2 months ago | 
brookings.edu | Lauren Bauer |Sofoklis Goulas |Michael Hansen |Katharine Meyer
Editor's note: This is part of the “Why we have and need a US Department of Education” series which seeks to examine the role of the U.S. Department of Education at a time when the president of the United States has called for the Department’s demise. It considers what the Department does to shape education policy and practice in the United States. It also addresses misconceptions about the Department’s role and the president’s authority to dismantle it.
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Jan 10, 2025 | 
benton.org | Lauren Bauer |Chloe East |Olivia Howard
To assess the compensation of workers, it matters not only how much money they earn, but also the manner in which their pay is earned. That is to say, to earn $25,000, one worker may have reliable and consistent earnings and hours from a single employer, while another may have multiple employers, inconsistent work hours, and variable wages. While workers may desire some amount of flexibility in their work schedule and earnings, volatility itself can also be troublesome.
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Jan 9, 2025 | 
brookings.edu | Lauren Bauer |Chloe East |Olivia Howard
To assess the compensation of workers, it matters not only how much money they earn, but also the manner in which their pay is earned. That is to say, to earn $25,000, one worker may have reliable and consistent earnings and hours from a single employer, while another may have multiple employers, inconsistent work hours, and variable wages. While workers may desire some amount of flexibility in their work schedule and earnings, volatility itself can also be troublesome.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
brookings.edu | Lauren Bauer |Wendy Edelberg |Eileen Alt Powell
This analysis uses key indicators from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) to investigate how firms are hiring and retaining workers and the implications for the labor market. More recently, a declining quit rate, and lower rates of job openings, separations, and hires, suggest that both workers and firms are behaving with caution. The labor market might be at a turning point.
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Oct 31, 2024 | 
brookings.edu | Lauren Bauer |Wendy Edelberg |Olivia Howard |Eileen Alt Powell
Home The softening labor market shows resilience and some pockets of slack Given the increase in the unemployment rate since spring 2023, attention has turned to whether today’s softer labor market is still tight, back down to a more sustainable pace, or even showing signs of slack (meaning whether the labor market is showing signs that it could be stronger without putting unwelcome upward pressure in inflation). In this piece, we review a series of labor market indicators that provide...
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Jul 26, 2024 | 
brookings.edu | Lauren Bauer |Noadia Steinmetz-Silber
The first line of Claudia Goldin’s Nobel Lecture notes, “Women are now at the center of the world’s economies.” Indeed, labor force participation rates for prime-age women in the U.S. have grown significantly over time, and, earlier this year, prime-age women exceeded their highest labor force participation rate ever: Since January 2024, about 78 percent of women between the ages of 25 and 54 have participated in the labor force (figure 1).
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May 22, 2024 | 
brookings.edu | Lauren Bauer |Wendy Edelberg |Cameron Greene |Olivia Howard
During the 2021 Leaders Summit on Climate, President Biden pledged that, on the road to economy-wide net zero emissions in 2050, the U.S. power sector would be carbon pollution free by 2035 (White House 2021). Meeting these goals requires building clean energy infrastructure at an unprecedented speed.
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Mar 20, 2024 | 
brookings.edu | Lauren Bauer |Eloise Burtis |Wendy Edelberg |Sofoklis Goulas
Rental housing in the United States has become less affordable in recent years due to several factors, including a shift in demand for housing in the wake of COVID-19 (Mondragon and Wieland 2022). The result is low vacancy rates (i.e., the share of units available for rent without a tenant), high rent inflation, and housing expenditures that strain the budgets of lower-income households.
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Dec 6, 2023 | 
brookings.edu | Lauren Bauer |Eloise Burtis |Olivia Howard |Sarah Wang
In 2021, an estimated 4.3 million prime-age adults (individuals aged 25 to 54) in the U.S. were enrolled in postsecondary education (college and graduate school), amounting to 7.3 percent of prime-age adults. That share has fluctuated with economic conditions but has overall trended downward over the last two decades. When there are fewer jobs and fewer work hours available, the opportunity costs of taking time to continue education are lower.
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Oct 5, 2023 | 
hamiltonproject.org | Lauren Bauer |Chloe East
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP; formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) is a crucial part of the safety net in the United States, providing benefits to roughly 41 million Americans per month to maintain a nutritious diet. Following welfare reform in 1996, SNAP became the only truly universal means-tested safety net program in the U.S. In that same year, however, work requirements in SNAP expanded, limiting the efficacy of the program to support all low-income households.
