This Economic Letter summarizes the papers presented at a conference on "Labor Markets and the Macroeconomy" held at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on March 3 and 4, 2006.

During the economic expansion of the 1990s, the United States enjoyed both low inflation rates and low levels of unemployment. Juhn, Murphy, and Topel (2002) point out that the low unemployment rates for men in the 1990s were accompanied by historically high rates of non-employment suggesting...

The evidence that developments in compensation growth lead overall CPI inflation has thus far been inconclusive. This study, however, sheds new light on the relationship between labor costs and price inflation. By breaking down compensation and prices into their various components, the author...

The authors examine 39 years of wage data for workers in mobile occupations within a set of employers in three midwestern cities. They study wage changes during years of rising, falling, and steady inflation to identify regularities that could broaden understanding of the inflationary process at...