Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data show labor’s share of income at a historic low. This Policy Discussion Paper explores the BLS calculations with an eye to understanding the factors leading to the recent fall in labor’s share. While data limitations prohibit replication of the BLS...

Evidence from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics shows that while the majority of job changers who state they were not fired or laid off choose jobs with wages that are higher than their previous jobs, a substantial proportion of these job changers choose jobs that have lower wages. A model is...

The current wage at a job may not fully reflect the "value" of that job. For example, a job with a low starting wage may be preferred to one with a high starting wage if the growth rate of wages is higher in the former than in the latter. In fact, differences in wage growth can potentially...

An empirical investigation of the relationship between marriage and wages, arguing that marriage signals certain unobservable individual characteristics - including ability, honesty, loyalty, dependability, and determination - which are valued by employers, and that failure to control for the...

Economists have long observed that wages alone do not fully reflect a job’s value—job “amenities” also play a role. Recent empirical studies have confirmed this observation to be the case. Researchers are also finding that workers frequently choose to take lower-paying jobs, which...