Using new measures of job skills and standard measures of education and earnings, the authors examine the effects of changing occupational and industry employment patterns on the skill composition of work between 1960 and 1985. The results show a strong upgrading of cognitive and interactive...

The most-often stated reason the decline in average real weekly wages among production workers has been that technological advancements have resulted in increased demand for skilled workers, leaving less-skilled workers with fewer job opportunities. In this paper, David R. Howell examines this...

Generous unemployment benefits lie at the heart of the conventional explanation for persistent high unemployment. The effects of benefit generosity on work incentives are more ambiguous in a broader behavioural framework in which workers get substantial disutility from unemployment (given...

In the midst of sharply rising long-term unemployment, a series of unemployment benefit (UB) eligibility extensions raised the regular 26-week limit to as many as 99 weeks in some states. In response, leading economists have invoked the 'laws of economics' to warn that the extensions may be...