[...]This paper examines the operation of the U.S. labor marketin the 2001 recovery. Because the United States is in the middleof the recovery, ours is a real-time analysis; thus, someconclusions could change if the recovery stalls or employmentgrows suddenly. For instance, since August 2003,...

This paper presents evidence on the relation among incarceration, crime, and the economic incentives to crime, ranging from unemployment to income inequality. It makes three points: 1) The U.S. has incarcerated an extraordinarily high proportion of men of working age overall, and among blacks....

Much work on crime has focused on the effect of criminal sanctions on crime, ignoring (except as a control variable) the effect of labor market conditions on crime. This study reviews studies of time series, cross area, and individual evidence pertaining to the effect of unemployment and other...

The Great Recession tested the ability of the "great U.S. jobs machine" to limit the severity of unemployment in a major economic downturn and to restore full employment quickly afterward. In the crisis the American labor market failed to live up to expectations. The level and duration of...

A paper presented at the December 2004 conference "Labor Market Developments in the United States and Canada since 2000," cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Canadian Consulate General in New York, the Centre for the Study of Living Standards, and the New York Association...