From the early 1990s through the peak of the last business cycle, relatively low U.S. unemployment rates seemed to make the United States a model for the rest of the world’s economies. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and...

The Great Recession has been hard on recent college graduates, but it has been even harder for black recent college graduates. This report examines the labor-market outcomes of black recent college graduates using the general approach developed by Federal Reserve Bank of New York researchers...

Relative to any of the most common benchmarks – the cost of living, the wages of the average worker, or average productivity levels – the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is well below its historical value. These usual reference points, however, understate the true erosion in...

During the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, President Obama proposed cutting the annual cost of living adjustment for Social Security by switching to an index that would show a lower measured rate of inflation. This alternative index, the chained consumer price index (CCPI-U), shows...

Millions of American workers are poorly compensated for the work they do. This is not because they do not work hard or deserve adequate compensation. Rather, it is due to a political failure to ensure that increases in economic growth and productivity over the last several decades have been...

There have been a number of proposals in policy circles that involve raising the Social Security retirement age. This is viewed as both a way to reduce or eliminate the projected shortfall in the program and also a response to projected increases in longevity. This paper examines the impact of...

About 7.4 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) work in the United States, making up 5.3 percent of the total U.S. workforce. About 7.1 million of these AAPI workers are Asian Americans; about 300,000 are Pacific Islanders. The AAPI workforce is almost 20 times larger today than...

There is enormous public confusion (much of it deliberately cultivated) about the extent of Social Security’s projected shortfall. Many policymakers and analysts point out that projections from the Congressional Budget Office and the Social Security Trustees show the program to be out of...

We use Bureau of Justice Statistics data to estimate that, in 2008, the United States had between 12 and 14 million ex-offenders of working age. Because a prison record or felony conviction greatly lowers ex-offenders’ prospects in the labor market, we estimate that this large population...

On January 23, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its estimates for union membership in the United States in 2012. This issue brief focuses on the union membership numbers by state. In addition to presenting the BLS estimates for overall union membership in each state, we also provide...