The proportion of workers earning low wages in the American economy declined from 1963 through 1979. Since 1979, both the low-wage and the high-wage shares of employment have increased, leading to wage polarization. Analysis of Current Population Survey data indicates that this occurred for both...

In the late 1980s James Stock and Mark Watson developed for the U.S. economy an alternative coincident index to the one now published by the Conference Board. They used the Kalman filter to estimate a latent dynamic factor for the national economy and designated the common factor as the...