Most economists maintain that the labor market in the United States (and elsewhere) is 'tight' because unemployment … rates are low and the Beveridge Curve (the vacancies-to-unemployment ratio) is high. They infer from this that there is … stagnant for some time. We show that unemployment is not key to understanding wage formation in the USA and hasn't been since …

not the case. Although unemployment is low, the labor market is not 'tight'. On the contrary, we show that what matters …

Unemployment is notoriously difficult to predict. In previous studies, once country and year fixed effects are added to … panel estimates, few variables predict changes in unemployment rates. Using panel data for 29 European countries collected … just over 10000 observations, we predict changes in the unemployment rate 12 months ahead. We do so using individuals …