This paper addresses the question of how a minimum wage increase affects the wages of low-wage workers. Most studies assume that there is a simple mechanical increase in the wage for workers earning a wage between the old and the new minimum wage, with some studies allowing for spillovers to...

This paper examines the reasons why employers used and even increased their use of temporary help agencies during the tight labor markets of the 1990s. Based on case study evidence from the hospital and auto supply industries, we evaluate various hypotheses for this phenomenon. In high-skilled...

The authors perform a meta-analysis of more than 200 published studies on the effects of raising the minimum wage to determine impacts on employment, wages, and more.

The essays in this volume, authored by close friends, associates and students, pay tribute to Sar Levitan and the enduring mark he left on the field of social policy. The book is loosely organized around the method of analysis taught and practiced by Levitan: identifying problems through the...

Barnow, Trutko, and Piatak focus on whether persistent occupation-specific labor shortages might lead to inefficiencies in the U.S. economy. They describe why shortages arise, the difficulty in ascertaining that a shortage is present, and how to assess strategies to alleviate the shortage.

A variety of evidence points to significant growth in domestic contracting out over the last two decades, yet the phenomenon is not well documented. In this paper, we pull together data from various sources to shed light on the extent of and trends in domestic outsourcing, the occupations in...

Policy experts advance our understanding of the labor market experiences of older workers while pointing our that current workforce programs often leave this growing population underserved.