Recent research has challenged the conventional wisdom among economists that increases in the minimum wage reduce employment among low-wage workers. Although some studies continue to find negative effects, others suggest that moderately raising the minimum wage may not reduce employment. The...

A modification of existing sticky-wage models to account for the observed cyclical behavior of real wages by means of a model that introduces productivity factors into nominal-wage contracts.

A presentation of some new evidence on differences in the causes of high- and low-frequency movements in employment, focusing on whether the components of cyclical and secular (regional) variations in job growth follow similar patterns.

A study of whether changes in unionism affect the aggregate level of employment in the economy and, in particular, whether an individual who lives in an SMSA where unions are weak is more likely to be employed than an individual who lives in an area where unions are strong.

A discussion of sticky nominal wages, showing that nominal income or price-level targeting policies result in smaller distortions than do policies that target output or money.

Employment in the information technology (IT) field rose rapidly during the late 1990s. Many IT employees are foreign born and are working in the United States with H-1B visas-temporary nonimmigrant visas issued for terms of up to six years. Critics of the H-1B program contend that it reduces...

During the recovery from the 2001 recession, the business press and economic analysts used payroll employment data released monthly by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as evidence of protracted weakness in the labor market. But using these monthly releases for this type of analysis can...