This paper presents two key facts which call into question the value of unemployment rates as barometers of labor market tightness. First, while both unemployment rates and unsatisfied labor demand proxies perform reasonably well on their own in compensation growth equations, in models which...

This paper first documents trends in employment rates and then reviews what is known about the various factors that have been proposed to explain the decline in the overall employment-to-population ratio between 1999 and 2016. Population aging has had a notable effect on the overall employment...