This paper discusses various concepts of unemployment rate benchmarks that are frequently used by policymakers for … particular, we propose two broad categories of unemployment rate benchmarks: (1) a longer-run unemployment rate expected to … prevail after adjusting to business cycle shocks and (2) a stable-price unemployment rate tied to inflationary pressures. We …

emphasis on their evolution over the business cycle. Blacks have substantially higher and more cyclical unemployment rates than … comparatively higher risk of job loss. In contrast, the Hispanic-white unemployment rate gap is comparatively small and is largely …

higher wages. This increases firms' incentives to post more vacancies, which makes unemployment volatile and sensitive to … aggregate shocks. The model is robust to two major criticisms of existing theories of sluggish wages and volatile unemployment … explains 70% of unemployment volatility …