This paper explores the potential impact of the Federal Reserve Board’s decision on interest rates on the budget deficit. The first part recounts the history of the 1990s surplus, correcting the widely held misunderstanding that this surplus was achieved by the Clinton administration’s tax...

On January 23, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its estimates for union membership in the United States in 2012. This issue brief focuses on the union membership numbers by state. In addition to presenting the BLS estimates for overall union membership in each state, we also provide...

While the unionization of most private-sector workers is governed by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the legal scope of collective bargaining for state and local public-sector workers is the domain of states and, where states allow it, local authorities. This hodge-podge of...

It is widely believed that volunteering will improve workers’ job prospects. The logic is that volunteering offers opportunities to expand work-related experience, develop new skills, and build a network of professional contacts. For young people with little history of paid employment it can...

On January 24, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its estimates for union membership in the United States in 2013. This issue brief focuses on the union membership numbers by gender, education, race, and private vs public sector.

This issue brief looks at the most recent national data available to examine the impact that being in or represented by a union has on the wages and benefits of women in the paid workforce. Even after controlling for factors such as age, race, industry, educational attainment and state of...

In this report, we review the most recent data available to examine the impact of unionization on the wages and benefits paid to black workers. These data show that even after controlling for factors such as age and education level, unionization has a significant positive impact on black...

This report argues that a key driver in rising inequality and a decline in the employment to population ratio is conscious economic policy, with a particularly important and under-appreciated role for macroeconomic policy. The paper first demonstrates the remarkable “flexibility” of U.S....

Currently twenty-four states have “right–to-work” laws, which primarily restrict the rights of workers and employers in the private sector from entering into certain kinds of labor contracts. Federal labor law mandates that unions represent all workers at a workplace, whether they are...

Recent estimates of the U.S. economic gains that would result from the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are very small — only 0.13 percent of GDP by 2025. Taking into account the un-equalizing effect of trade on wages, this paper finds the median wage earner will probably lose as a...