Most economists maintain that the labor market in the United States (and elsewhere) is tight because unemployment rates … are low and the Beveridge Curve (the vacancies-to-unemployment ratio) is high. They infer from this that there is … stagnant for some time. We show that unemployment is not key to understanding wage formation in the USA and hasn t been since …

pay and the local unemployment rate - in modern U.S. data. Consistent with recent evidence from more than 40 other …'s theoretical framework: (i) wages are higher in states with more generous unemployment benefits, (ii) the perceived probability of … job-finding is lower in states with higher unemployment, and (iii) employees are less happy in states that have higher …