It has been well documented that the share of the working-age population employed in "middle-skill" occupations has been falling for some time, while the share in lower- and higher-skill jobs has been rising -- i.e. "polarization" of the labor market (e.g. Autor 2010). However, the dynamics and...

Since 2007, the labor force participation rate has fallen from about 66 percent to about 63 percent. The sources of this decline have been widely debated among academics and policymakers, with some arguing that the participation rate is depressed due to weak labor demand while others argue that...

As of October 2022, the retired share of the U.S. population was nearly 1-½ percentage points above its pre-pandemic level (after adjusting for updated population controls to the Current Population Survey), accounting for nearly all of the shortfall in the labor force participation rate. In...

The employment-to-population rate of high-school aged youth has fallen by about 20 percentage points since the late 1980s. The human capital implications of this decline depend on the reasons behind it. In this paper, I demonstrate that growth in the number of less-educated immigrants may have...