Economics Commons^™

Covid-19'S Impacts On The Labor Market In 2020, Brad J. Hershbein, Harry J. Holzer

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

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

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Impact Of Unemployment Insurance Benefit Generosity On Re-Employment Wages During The Great Recession, Hayden Cobb

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper examines the impact of the replacement ratio on re-employment wages during the great recession. This is done using a data set from IPUMS CPS displaced workers supplement between 2005 and 2012. Using OLS analysis, I estimated the impacts of the replacement ratio on the ratio of re-employment wages to pre-unemployment wages. I found that a replacement ratio of one would lead to a 77.6% increase in the ratio of re-employment wages to pre-unemployment wages, without the consideration of any other variables. The findings of the replacement ratio support economic theory and contradict the findings of some major papers …

Income In The Off-Season: Household Adaptation To Yearly Work Interruptions, John Coglianese, Brendan M. Price

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

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 …

Impacts Of The Covid-19 Pandemic And The Cares Act On Earnings And Inequality, Guido Matias Cortes, Eliza C. Forsythe

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

Impacts Of The Covid-19 Pandemic And The Cares Act On Earnings And Inequality, Guido Matias Cortes, Eliza C. Forsythe

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

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 …

Redundancy Insurance Is Not Unemployment Insurance, Zhengxiao Wu

Research Collection School Of Economics

In a commentary, SMU Senior Lecturer of Statistics Wu Zhengxiao discussed the difference between redundancy insurance and unemployment insurance. He shared Japan's example, where the cost for unemployment insurance is higher than redundancy insurance, and added that being an unprecedented policy, more care should be taken when implementing it.

Options For Unemployment Insurance Structural And Administrative Reform: Proposals And Analysis, Stephen A. Wandner

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

The unemployment insurance (UI) program is broken. UI benefits and taxes are out of balance, with benefit payments tending to exceed tax revenues, while the program is unable to provide adequate reemployment services to permanently separated UI recipients. The current crisis in the UI program has been building over the past four decades. Although UI and Social Security were both enacted as part of the Social Security Act, reforms to the programs have diverged sharply. Congress has frequently amended the Social Security program to increase benefits and taxes, and then in 1972 it enacted a permanent annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) …

An Unemployment Insurance Covid-19 Crisis Response, Stephen A. Wandner, Christopher J. O'Leary

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Disaster Unemployment Assistance Would Help Gig, Contract, Self-Employed Workers Affected By Covid-19, Stephen A. Woodbury

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Reforming Unemployment Insurance, Christopher J. O'Leary

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

States Lack Adequate Unemployment Insurance Reserves, Christopher J. O'Leary

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

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

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 …

Effects Of Unemployment Insurance Reforms In Brazil, Christopher J. O'Leary, Túlio Cravo, Ana Cristina Sierra, Leandro Justino Veloso

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Unemployment Insurance Reforms In Brazil, Christopher J. O'Leary, Túlio Cravo, Ana Cristina Sierra, Leandro Justino Veloso

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

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

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 …

Strengths Of The Social Safety Net In The Great Recession: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance And Unemployment Insurance, Christopher J. O'Leary Editor, David W. Stevens Editor, Stephen A. Wandner, Michael Wiseman Editor

Upjohn Press

The contributors in this book use administrative data from six states from before, during, and after the Great Recession to gauge the degree to which Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) and Unemployment Insurance (UI) interacted. They also recommend ways that the program policies could be altered to better serve those suffering hardship as a result of future economic downturns.

Restoring Unemployment Insurance As Social Insurance, Christopher J. O'Leary

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Evidence-Based Reform Of The Unemployment Insurance System, Stephen A. Wandner

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Unemployment Insurance Reform: Fixing A Broken System, Stephen A. Wandner Editor

Upjohn Press

The Unemployment Insurance (UI) system is a lasting piece of the Social Security Act which was enacted in 1935. But like most things that are over 80 years old, it occasionally needs maintenance to keep it operating smoothly while keeping up with the changing demands placed upon it. However, the UI system has been ignored by policymakers for decades and, say the authors, it is broken, out of date, and badly in need of repair.

Stephen A. Wandner pulls together a group of UI researchers, each with decades of experience, who describe the weaknesses in the current system and propose …

A Comparative Analysis Of Unemployment Insurance Financing Methods, Wayne Vroman, Elaine Maag, Christopher J. O'Leary, Stephen A. Woodbury

External Papers and Reports

No abstract provided.

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 …

The Current State Of Workers' Compensation: Benefit Adequacy, Return To Work, And Prevention, Marcus Dillender, H. Allan Hunt

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Demonstration And Evaluation Of The Short-Time Compensation Program In Iowa And Oregon: Final Report, Susan N. Houseman, Christopher J. O'Leary, Katharine G. Abraham, Frank Bennici, Susan Labin, Richard Sigman

External Papers and Reports

Short-time compensation (STC) is an optional program within some state unemployment insurance (UI) systems that allows employers experiencing a temporary reduction in business to lower the average hours of employees in lieu of laying them off. Employer use of the STC option has been low in states with STC programs. We conducted demonstrations in Iowa and Oregon to evaluate the effectiveness of several interventions designed to increase employer awareness and use of STC, including disseminating information about STC to specific employers (members of the “treatment” group) over a 12-month period. The main findings support the hypothesis that lack of awareness …

Using Behavioral Insights To Improve Take-Up Of A Reemployment Program: Trial Design And Findings, Matthew Darling, Christopher J. O'Leary, Irma L. Perez-Johnson, Jaclyn Lefkowitz, Kenneth J. Kline, Ben Damerow, Randall W. Eberts, Samia Amin, Greg Chojnacki

External Papers and Reports

No abstract provided.