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Full-Text Articles in Economics
Predictive Analytics Supporting Labor Market Success: A Career Explorer For Job Seekers And Workforce Professionals In Michigan, Christopher J. O'Leary, Salomon Orellana, Kevin Doyle, Randall W. Eberts, Ben Damerow, Amy Meyers, Kenneth J. Kline, Anna Wilcoxson, Beth C. Truesdale, Scott Powell
Predictive Analytics Supporting Labor Market Success: A Career Explorer For Job Seekers And Workforce Professionals In Michigan, Christopher J. O'Leary, Salomon Orellana, Kevin Doyle, Randall W. Eberts, Ben Damerow, Amy Meyers, Kenneth J. Kline, Anna Wilcoxson, Beth C. Truesdale, Scott Powell
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Career Explorer provides customized career exploration tools for workforce development staff and job seekers in Michigan. There are separate Career Explorer modules for mediated staff services and self-service by job seekers. The system was developed by the Michigan Center for Data and Analytics in collaboration with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and Michigan Works! Southwest. It was funded by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Workforce Investment and the Schmidt Futures foundation’s Data for the American Dream (D4AD) project. In this paper, we describe specifications of the models behind the frontline-staff-mediated version of Career Explorer, which are …
Gender Gaps From Labor Market Shocks, Ria Ivandić, Anne Sophie Lassen
Gender Gaps From Labor Market Shocks, Ria Ivandić, Anne Sophie Lassen
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Job loss leads to persistent adverse labor market outcomes, but assessments of gender differences in labor market recovery are lacking. We utilize plant closures in Denmark to estimate gender gaps in labor market outcomes and document that women face an increased risk of unemployment and lose a larger share of their earnings in the two years following job displacement. When accounting for observable differences in human Capital across men and women, half of the gender gap in unemployment remains. In a standard decomposition framework, we document that child care imposes an important barrier to women’s labor market recovery regardless of …
Why Are Unemployment Insurance Claims So Low?, Christopher J. O'Leary, Kenneth J. Kline, Thomas A. Stengle, Stephen A. Wandner
Why Are Unemployment Insurance Claims So Low?, Christopher J. O'Leary, Kenneth J. Kline, Thomas A. Stengle, Stephen A. Wandner
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
In this paper, we examine the reasons why unemployment insurance (UI) claims have declined so dramatically over the past three decades. The fall in the UI claims rate is concerning because it suggests a reduced countercyclical effectiveness of the UI program. Additionally, weekly initial UI claims are regarded as an important leading indicator of aggregate economic activity, so their meaning has changed. We use a Oaxaca (1973) decomposition approach to identify the main factors for the decline in claims. The procedure suggests what the level of claims would have been later in the period, had values of variables or parameters …
Estimating The Effects Of The Ada Amendments Act On The Hiring And Termination Of Individuals With Disabilities, Using New Disability Categorizations, Patrick Button, Philip Armour, Simon Hollands
Estimating The Effects Of The Ada Amendments Act On The Hiring And Termination Of Individuals With Disabilities, Using New Disability Categorizations, Patrick Button, Philip Armour, Simon Hollands
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Disability discrimination laws are often used to potentially increase employment for individuals with disabilities. However, legal theory and empirical economics research do not provide conclusive answers as to how expansions in disability discrimination laws affect economic outcomes, namely hiring rates, for individuals with disabilities. We estimate the effect of the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA) on employment transitions: hirings and terminations for individuals with disabilities relative to those without disabilities. To calculate employment transitions, we use data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). We also use the SIPP to develop additional measures and categorizations of disability based on …
Disability Insurance Screening And Worker Outcomes, Alexander Ahammer, Analisa Packham
Disability Insurance Screening And Worker Outcomes, Alexander Ahammer, Analisa Packham
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We estimate the returns to more targeted disability insurance (DI) programs in terms of labor force participation and worker health. To do so, we analyze male workers after an acute workplace injury that experience differential levels of application screening. We find that when workers face tighter screening requirements, they are less likely to claim disability and are more likely to remain in the labor force. We observe no differences in any physical or mental health outcomes, including reinjury. Our findings imply that imposing stricter DI screening requirements has large fiscal benefits but does not yield any detectable health costs, on …
Firms And Unemployment Insurance Take-Up, Marta Lachowska, Isaac Sorkin, Stephen A. Woodbury
Firms And Unemployment Insurance Take-Up, Marta Lachowska, Isaac Sorkin, Stephen A. Woodbury
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We use administrative data to quantify the firm role in unemployment insurance (UI) take-up. First, there are firm effects in both claiming and appeals, and, consistent with deterrence effects, these are negatively correlated. Second, low-wage workers are less likely to claim and more likely to have their claims appealed than median-wage workers, and firm effects explain a large share of these income gradients. Third, high-claiming and low-appealing firms are desirable firms: they are higher-paying and have lower separation rates. Finally, the dominant source of targeting error in the UI system is that eligible workers do not apply. Our findings emphasize …
Place-Based Consequences Of Person-Based Transfers: Evidence From Recessions, Brad J. Hershbein, Bryan A. Stuart
Place-Based Consequences Of Person-Based Transfers: Evidence From Recessions, Brad J. Hershbein, Bryan A. Stuart
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper studies how government transfers respond to changes in local economic activity that emerge during recessions. Local labor markets that experience greater employment losses during recessions face persistent relative decreases in earnings per capita. However, these areas also experience persistent increases in transfers per capita, which offset 16 percent of the earnings loss on average. The increase in transfers is driven by unemployment insurance in the short run, and medical, retirement, and disability transfers in the long run. Our results show that nominally place-neutral transfer programs redistribute considerable sums of money to places with depressed economic conditions.
How Reliable Are Administrative Reports Of Paid Work Hours?, Marta Lachowska, Alexandre Mas, Stephen A. Woodbury
How Reliable Are Administrative Reports Of Paid Work Hours?, Marta Lachowska, Alexandre Mas, Stephen A. Woodbury
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper examines the quality of quarterly records on work hours collected from employers in the State of Washington to administer the unemployment insurance (UI) system, specifically to determine eligibility for UI. We subject the administrative records to four “trials,” all of which suggest the records reliably measure paid hours of work. First, distributions of hours in the administrative records and Current Population Survey outgoing rotation groups (CPS) both suggest that 52–54% of workers work approximately 40 hours per week. Second, in the administrative records, quarter-to-quarter changes in the log of earnings are highly correlated with quarter-to-quarter changes in the …
Globalization, Trade Imbalances, And Labor Market Adjustment, Rafael Dix-Carneiro, João Paulo Pessoa, Ricardo Reyes-Heroles, Sharon Traiberman
Globalization, Trade Imbalances, And Labor Market Adjustment, Rafael Dix-Carneiro, João Paulo Pessoa, Ricardo Reyes-Heroles, Sharon Traiberman
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We study the role of global trade imbalances in shaping the adjustment dynamics in response to trade shocks. We build and estimate a general equilibrium, multicountry, multisector model of trade with two key ingredients: 1) consumption-saving decisions in each country commanded by representative households, leading to endogenous trade imbalances, and 2) labor market frictions across and within sectors, leading to unemployment dynamics and sluggish transitions to shocks. We use the estimated model to study the behavior of labor markets in response to globalization shocks, including shocks to technology, trade costs, and intertemporal preferences (savings gluts). We find that modeling trade …
The Covid-19 Pandemic's Evolving Impacts On The Labor Market: Who's Been Hurt And What We Should Do, Brad J. Hershbein, Harry J. Holzer
The Covid-19 Pandemic's Evolving Impacts On The Labor Market: Who's Been Hurt And What We Should Do, Brad J. Hershbein, Harry J. Holzer
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
In this paper, we shed light on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the labor market, and how they have evolved over most of the year 2020. Relying primarily on microdata from the CPS and state-level data on virus caseloads, mortality, and policy restrictions, we consider a range of employment outcomes—including permanent layoffs, which generate large and lasting costs—and how these outcomes vary across demographic groups, occupations, and industries over time. We also examine how these employment patterns vary across different states, according to the timing and severity of virus caseloads, deaths, and closure measures. We find that the …
Income In The Off-Season: Household Adaptation To Yearly Work Interruptions, John Coglianese, Brendan M. Price
Income In The Off-Season: Household Adaptation To Yearly Work Interruptions, John Coglianese, Brendan M. Price
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Joblessness is highly seasonal. To analyze how households adapt to seasonal joblessness, we introduce a measure of seasonal work interruptions premised on the idea that a seasonal worker will tend to exit employment around the same time each year. We show that an excess share of prime-age U.S. workers experience recurrent separations spaced exactly 12 months apart. These separations coincide with aggregate seasonal downturns and are concentrated in seasonally volatile industries. Examining workers most prone to seasonal work interruptions, we find that these workers incur large earnings losses during the off-season. Lost earnings are 1) driven mainly by repeated separations …
Nudges To Increase Completion Of Welfare Applications: Experimental Evidence From Michigan, Christopher J. O'Leary, Dallas Oberlee, Gabrielle Pepin
Nudges To Increase Completion Of Welfare Applications: Experimental Evidence From Michigan, Christopher J. O'Leary, Dallas Oberlee, Gabrielle Pepin
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program provides cash assistance to very-low-income families with children. Application procedures to receive TANF benefits, however, often involve substantial transaction costs likely to reduce take-up. We estimate, through a randomized controlled trial design, the effects of a detailed telephone-call reminder to increase TANF application completion in southwest Michigan, where applicants must visit a regional public employment office at least four times to be eligible for benefits. We do not find that personalizing reminder calls increased participation in the initial appointment at the public employment office. However, conditional on attending the initial session, applicants …
Impacts Of The Covid-19 Pandemic And The Cares Act On Earnings And Inequality, Guido Matias Cortes, Eliza C. Forsythe
Impacts Of The Covid-19 Pandemic And The Cares Act On Earnings And Inequality, Guido Matias Cortes, Eliza C. Forsythe
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), we show that the Covid-19 pandemic led to a loss of aggregate real labor earnings of more than $250 billion between March and July 2020. By exploiting the panel structure of the CPS, we show that the decline in aggregate earnings was entirely driven by declines in employment; individuals who remained employed did not experience any atypical earnings changes. We find that job losses were substantially larger among workers in low-paying jobs. This led to a dramatic increase in inequality in labor earnings during the pandemic. Simulating standard unemployment benefits and Unemployment …
The Long-Term Labor Market Effects Of Parental Unemployment, Bernhard Schmidpeter
The Long-Term Labor Market Effects Of Parental Unemployment, Bernhard Schmidpeter
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
I investigate the impact of parental unemployment on children’s educational attainment and long-run labor market outcomes in Austria. I find that parental unemployment shortly before an important educational decision by parents for their children lowers a child’s probability of holding a university degree by more than 5 percentage points. I do not find that income is affected at the beginning of a child’s labor market career along the distribution, but I find a gradual deterioration later on. A substantial share of these long-term losses can be explained by the lower parental investment decision. My results emphasize the intergenerational and long-lasting …
The Effects Of Welfare Time Limits On Access To Financial Resources: Evidence From The 2010s, Gabrielle Pepin
The Effects Of Welfare Time Limits On Access To Financial Resources: Evidence From The 2010s, Gabrielle Pepin
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 established the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program within the United States. TANF mandated 60-month lifetime time limits for federal cash assistance dollars. Because states reserve the right to set their own stricter or more generous time limits, the 60-month lifetime limit did not bind in all cases. In recent years, however, several states imposed TANF time limits for the first time or made existing time limits more stringent. Using administrative and survey data, I find that stricter time limits decrease annual TANF participation by 22 percent and annual …
Do Stronger Employment Discrimination Protections Decrease Reliance On Social Security Disability Insurance? Evidence From The U.S. Social Security Reforms, Patrick Button, Mashfiqur R. Khan
Do Stronger Employment Discrimination Protections Decrease Reliance On Social Security Disability Insurance? Evidence From The U.S. Social Security Reforms, Patrick Button, Mashfiqur R. Khan
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The United States Social Security Amendments of 1983 (SSA1983) increased the full retirement age (FRA) and increased penalties for retiring before the FRA. This cut to retirement benefits caused spillover effects on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) applications and receipt by making SSDI relatively more generous. We explore if stronger disability and age discrimination laws moderated these spillovers, using variation whereby many state laws are broader or stronger than federal law. We estimate the effects of these laws on SSDI applications and receipt using a difference-in-differences approach, comparing cohorts affected by SSA1983 to similarly aged unaffected cohorts, across states. We …
State Unemployment Insurance Reserves Are Not Adequate, Christopher J. O'Leary, Kenneth J. Kline
State Unemployment Insurance Reserves Are Not Adequate, Christopher J. O'Leary, Kenneth J. Kline
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Regular unemployment insurance (UI) benefits are paid from reserves held in state accounts at the U.S. Treasury. The Great Recession exhausted the majority of UI reserve accounts, and not all states have rebuilt reserves. We examine the adequacy of current state and systemwide UI reserves to weather a mild, moderate, or severe recession in the coming months. Our results suggest that a recession as severe as the average of those occurring since 1975 would cause 18 states to exhaust UI reserves. Our simulations account for the fact that several states have cut benefit generosity since the Great Recession ended. Results …
Heterogeneous Impacts On Layoffs Of Changes In Brazilian Unemployment Insurance Eligibility Rules, Túlio Cravo, Christopher J. O'Leary, Ana Cristina Sierra, Leandro Justino Veloso
Heterogeneous Impacts On Layoffs Of Changes In Brazilian Unemployment Insurance Eligibility Rules, Túlio Cravo, Christopher J. O'Leary, Ana Cristina Sierra, Leandro Justino Veloso
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper is based on the first use of program administrative data from Brazil’s unemployment insurance (UI) program to assess the impact of changes in UI eligibility criteria on layoff probabilities. We exploit exogenous program changes introduced by executive and legislative changes in 2015 to estimate impacts while accounting for the number of prior UI benefit requests. We estimate that changes in UI eligibility criteria had heterogeneous impacts distinguished by the number of prior benefit requests. We show that the 2015 changes in UI eligibility rules reduced layoffs and find evidence that the changes reduced collusion between workers and employers …
Lessons From The American Federal-State Unemployment Insurance System For A European Unemployment Benefits System, Christopher J. O'Leary, Burt S. Barnow, Karolien Lenaerts
Lessons From The American Federal-State Unemployment Insurance System For A European Unemployment Benefits System, Christopher J. O'Leary, Burt S. Barnow, Karolien Lenaerts
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The federal-state system of unemployment insurance (UI) in the United States was established by the Social Security Act of 1935 during the Great Depression. Under the program, states provide temporary partial wage replacement to involuntarily unemployed workers with significant labor force attachment. The federal government induced states to establish UI programs through two means: 1) a uniform federal tax imposed on employer payrolls, with a 90 percent reduction granted in states operating approved UI programs, and 2) grants to states to administer their programs. The system has evolved into a collection of separate state programs adapted to different regional, economic, …
An Illustrated Case For Unemployment Insurance Reform, Christopher J. O'Leary, Stephen A. Wandner
An Illustrated Case For Unemployment Insurance Reform, Christopher J. O'Leary, Stephen A. Wandner
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We present a graphic case for unemployment insurance (UI) program reform. Through a series of illustrations summarizing historical trends, we show how the UI system has diverged from its intended purposes. Our figures show the decline of the program in addressing its essential aims of paying adequate unemployment compensation during involuntary unemployment and providing reemployment services. We illustrate the big differences in UI programs that have emerged because of the broad discretion afforded states to determine benefit generosity. We also illustrate declines in the financial means for providing benefits and reemployment services and a widening divergence among states in the …
Four Decades Of Declining Federal Leadership In The Federal-State Unemployment Insurance Program, Stephen A. Wandner
Four Decades Of Declining Federal Leadership In The Federal-State Unemployment Insurance Program, Stephen A. Wandner
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The unemployment insurance (UI) program was established in 1935. Unlike other social insurance programs created by the Social Security Act, it was established as a federal-state program. The federal government initially acted as a strong partner working with state agencies that operate the UI program. Over the past four decades, however, the federal role in the UI program has declined because of reductions in federal resources dedicated to the program and weakening policy leadership and programmatic support. As a result, states operate increasingly divergent UI programs, with many programs providing limited access to the program for experienced unemployed workers who …
Longer-Run Effects Of Antipoverty Policies On Disadvantaged Neighborhoods, David Neumark, Brian J. Asquith, Brittany Bass
Longer-Run Effects Of Antipoverty Policies On Disadvantaged Neighborhoods, David Neumark, Brian J. Asquith, Brittany Bass
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We estimate the longer-run effects of minimum wages, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and welfare on key economic indicators of economic self-sufficiency in disadvantaged neighborhoods. We find that the longer-run effects of the EITC are to increase employment and to reduce poverty and public assistance. We also find some evidence that higher welfare benefits had longer-run adverse effects, and quite robust evidence that tighter welfare time limits reduce poverty and public assistance in the longer run. The evidence on the long-run effects of the minimum wage on poverty and public assistance is not robust, with some evidence pointing to reductions …
Do Snap Work Requirements Work?, Timothy F. Harris
Do Snap Work Requirements Work?, Timothy F. Harris
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act waived Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) work requirements nationally in 2010 and broadened the eligibility for receiving waivers in subsequent years for Able-Bodied Adults without Dependents (ABAWD). From 2011 to 2016, many states voluntarily imposed work requirements, while other areas became ineligible for waivers because of improved economic conditions. Did the work requirements increase employment as intended, or did the policy merely remove food assistance for ABAWD who—despite an improving economy—still could not find employment? Using data from the American Community Survey from 2010 to 2016, I analyze the influence of work requirements on …
An Apple A Day? Adult Food Stamp Eligibility And Health Care Utilization Among Immigrants, Chloe N. East, Andrew I. Friedson
An Apple A Day? Adult Food Stamp Eligibility And Health Care Utilization Among Immigrants, Chloe N. East, Andrew I. Friedson
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
In this study, we document the effect of food stamp access on adult health care utilization. While the Food Stamp Program provides one of the largest safety nets in the United States today, the universal nature of the program across geographic areas and over time limits the potential for quasi-experimental analysis. To circumvent this, we use variation in documented immigrants’ eligibility for food stamps across states and over time due to welfare reform in 1996. Our estimates indicate that access to food stamps reduced physician visits. Additionally, we find that for single women, food stamps increased the affordability of specialty …
Evaluating Public Employment Programs With Field Experiments: A Survey Of American Evidence, Christopher J. O'Leary
Evaluating Public Employment Programs With Field Experiments: A Survey Of American Evidence, Christopher J. O'Leary
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Research in the 1970s based on observational data provided evidence consistent with predictions from economic theory that paying unemployment insurance (UI) benefits to involuntarily jobless workers prolongs unemployment. However, some scholars also reported estimates that the additional time spent in subsidized job search was productive. That is, UI receipt tended to raise reemployment wages after work search among the unemployed. A series of field experiments in the 1980s investigated positive incentives to overcome the work disincentive effects of UI. These were followed by experiments in the 1990s that evaluated the effects of restrictions on UI eligibility through stronger work search …
Does Increased Access To Health Insurance Impact Claims For Workers' Compensation? Evidence From Massachusetts Health Care Reform, Erin Todd Bronchetti, Melissa Mcinerney
Does Increased Access To Health Insurance Impact Claims For Workers' Compensation? Evidence From Massachusetts Health Care Reform, Erin Todd Bronchetti, Melissa Mcinerney
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We study over 20 million emergency room (ER) discharges in Massachusetts and three comparison states to estimate the impact of Massachusetts health care reform on claims for Workers’ Compensation (WC). Prior evidence on the relationship between health insurance and WC claiming behavior is mixed. We find that the reform caused a significant decrease in the number of per-capita ER discharges billed to WC. This result is driven by larger decreases in WC discharges for conditions for which there is greater scope to change the payer or the location of care. Conversely, we estimate smaller impacts for weekend versus weekday admissions …
The Employment Service-Unemployment Insurance Partnership: Origin, Evolution, And Revitalization, David E. Balducchi, Christopher J. O'Leary
The Employment Service-Unemployment Insurance Partnership: Origin, Evolution, And Revitalization, David E. Balducchi, Christopher J. O'Leary
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This study traces the origin and evolution of the partnership between the employment service and unemployment insurance programs in the United States. We examine objectives of the framers of the Wagner-Peyser and Social Security Acts that established these programs. Using primary sources, we then analyze early actions of the architects of social insurance to facilitate cooperation between the two programs to meet economic exigencies, grapple with political cronyism, and surmount legal barriers. We also discuss factors that caused changes in the employment service–unemployment insurance partnership over time. We identify reasons for the erosion in cooperation starting in the 1980s, and …
Are There Returns To Experience At Low-Skill Jobs? Evidence From Single Mothers In The United States Over The 1990s, Adam Looney, Dayanand S. Manoli
Are There Returns To Experience At Low-Skill Jobs? Evidence From Single Mothers In The United States Over The 1990s, Adam Looney, Dayanand S. Manoli
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Policy changes in the United States in the 1990s resulted in sizable increases in employment rates of single mothers. We show that this increase led to a large and abrupt increase in work experience for single mothers with young children. We then examine the economic return to this increase in experience for affected single mothers. Despite the increases in experience, single mothers’ real wages and employment have remained relatively unchanged. The empirical analysis suggests that an additional year of experience increases single mothers’ wage rates by less than 2 percent, a percentage lower than previous estimates in the literature.
Are State Unemployment Insurance Reserves Sufficient For The Next Recession?, Christopher J. O'Leary, Kenneth J. Kline
Are State Unemployment Insurance Reserves Sufficient For The Next Recession?, Christopher J. O'Leary, Kenneth J. Kline
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Regular state unemployment insurance (UI) benefits are paid from state reserves held in unemployment trust fund accounts at the U.S. Treasury. Employers covered by the federal-state UI system make contributions to reserve accounts based on taxable wages. The federal government provides incentives for forward funding of benefits to support UI as an automatic macroeconomic stabilizer in the economy. However, the Great Recession exhausted UI reserves for the majority of states, and not all of them have yet replenished those reserves. Based on patterns observed over the past 40 years, in this paper we simulate the effects on state and systemwide …
Wage Insurance As A Policy Option In The United States, Stephen A. Wandner
Wage Insurance As A Policy Option In The United States, Stephen A. Wandner
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Wage insurance is a program that attempts to help permanently displaced workers transition to employment rapidly, effectively, and equitably. Because displaced workers have been found to suffer substantial earnings losses when they become reemployed, a wage insurance program provides a temporary wage supplement that partially reduces the wage loss experienced by targeted, newly reemployed workers. While participating workers receive a “wage supplement,” the program is called “wage insurance” because of its design as a social insurance program rather than an income transfer program. This paper provides a discussion of the development of wage insurance as a policy option in the …