Employment increases after taxes are cut for most income earners — but not when tax cuts target the top 10% of earners — according to a recent paper in the Journal of Political Economy looking at data from the 1980s through the 2000s.
Last month, leadership at The Vindicator in Youngstown, Ohio told employees that the 150-year-old newspaper of record for this once-booming steel town would be shuttering. Family owned since the late-1800s, The Vindicator couldn’t find a buyer. A few weeks from now, there will be no daily newspaper to cover this city of 65,000.
There’s a phenomenon economists call “agglomeration economies,” where a collection of companies become more efficient by being close to one another. The idea holds for people, too. When people cluster in dense places like cities, they share insights and resources. Strong social connections make for good economics.
The U.S.-China trade war entered new territory when President Donald Trump last week ordered more tariffs on $300 billion worth of goods from China.
From hazy days spent lifeguarding at the local swimming hole to doling out endless soft-serve ice cream cones, summer means millions of teens across the U.S. are getting to work.
Around 6 million people aged 16 to 19 will work this summer, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The rest of the year, employment levels for these teens hover around 4 million to 5 million, so an additional 1 million to 2 million teens usually get jobs during the summer.
Individual perception — for example, how people feel they are doing financially compared with others — often doesn’t jibe with reality.
Economic mobility is one area where beliefs solidify absent information. Research shows that Americans are chronically under-informed about the size of the economic inequality gap in the U.S. That leads people to think they are more economically mobile than they really might be. And misperception can impact policy.
Each month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its Employment Situation report. This report includes about two dozen distinct datasets that can help economists, journalists and the public understand the health of the nation’s economy. It’s where to find monthly changes to the number of people employed and the unemployment rate, and it’s a report that’s widely covered in the media, but isn’t always covered with much context.
