Labor Economics Commons^™

The Worker Voice Gap: How Much Say Do Workers Want—And How Much Do They Actually Experience?, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Thomas A. Kochan

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

•The worker voice gap—the difference between the influence that workers want and what they experience—is very large. Nearly three-quarters of American workers want more voice at work than they currently have in three key areas: 1) compensation, 2) working conditions, and3) use of new technologies at work.

• The voice deficit is largest for compensation, but majorities of workers also express voice gaps over working conditions and the use of new technologies in their workplaces.

•Although voice gaps are relatively widespread, women tend to report larger voice gaps than men, and younger and middle-aged workers tend to report larger gaps …

The "Missing Self-Employed": How Better Data Change The Picture Of Self-Employment In The United States, Katharine G. Abraham, Susan N. Houseman, Beth C. Truesdale

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

How economically secure are self-employed workers? Accurate answers to this question depend on data that capture the full range of self-employed people, including business owners, independent contractors, and those working on an informal, often cash basis. Using data from the 2025 American Job Quality Study, we demonstrate that, because of the way standard survey questions are worded, a substantial number of self-employed people are likely miscoded as employees in existing surveys. Correctly including these “missing self-employed” increases the share of workers who are self-employed on their main job by nearly 50 percent. Compared to the self-employed captured by standard survey …

Are The Self-Employed Really Their Own Boss?: Evidence On The Degree Of Autonomy And Control The Self-Employed Have Over Their Work, Katharine G. Abraham, Susan N. Houseman, Beth C. Truesdale

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

Self-employment is commonly equated with being one’s own boss. This implies that, compared to employees, the self-employed have greater freedom to make their own decisions on key aspects of their job, including how they do their work and when they work. In this paper, we use information from a large, nationally representative survey, collected as part of the American Job Quality Study, to examine the degree to which workers in various self-employment arrangements do, in fact, control their own work. We find that while the self-employed are more likely than employees to have a lot of input into how and …

Abundance Strategies Should Promote Abundant Jobs In Distressed Places, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

A prominent recent policy debate is about “abundance policies”: policies to make it easier to build housing or infrastructure, deliver government services more quickly and more efficiently, and expedite the public funding of the most innovative and socially impactful research. In this essay, I argue that abundance advocates often mistakenly ignore or have a negative attitude toward “place-based policies.” These place-based policies would seek to increase employment rates, particularly in good jobs, in two types of distressed places that lack abundant job opportunities: distressed local labor markets and distressed neighborhoods. Both the goals and means of place-based policies fit into …

Short-Run Fiscal Effects Of Expanding Michigan's Preschool Program To Be Universal, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

This policy paper provides some updated estimates of the short-run fiscal effects of expanding Michigan’s state-funded preschool program, the Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP), to encompass universal access for Michigan’s four-year-olds. This is an update to Policy Paper No. 2025-034, which analyzed the economic and fiscal effects of Michigan’s current GSRP program as compared to the state having no program. The update takes advantage of a high-quality recent study of the economic effects of universal preschool programs in nine states, authored by Jackson, Turner, and Bastian (2025). Using the estimated economic effects of universal preschool from this recent study, …

Federal And State Governments Can Help Solve The Employment Problems Of People In Distressed Places To Spur Equitable Growth, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

Places in the United States differ greatly in their residents’ access to jobs, especially good jobs. Although the federal and state governments provide about $80 billion annually to create jobs through multiple programs, these job-creation initiatives are rarely targeted to economically distressed places, where the job-creation benefits for local residents are greatest. Moreover, many of these programs take the form of business tax incentives, which are less effective at job creation than customized services for businesses and workers. I argue that the prime-age employment rate of places should be used to target job-creation programs and review which such programs are …

Short-Run Economic Effects Of Michigan's State-Funded Preschool Programs, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

This policy paper estimates the short-run economic effects of the Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP), Michigan’s state-funded preschool program for 4-year-olds. The paper considers 15year effects on state residents’ per capita incomes due to impacts on employment rates and real wages, as well as cost-savings from free preschool and fiscal benefits due to tax base expansion. These 15-year effects ignore the program’s outcomes for child participants and focus on how the Michigan economy is affected by GSRP’s direct impacts on parents and preschool teachers. The estimates use a regional econometric model of a state’s economy, developed originally to evaluate economic …

Race And The Manufacturing Workforce: Opportunities To Expand Growth And Equity In A Rebounding Industry Sector, Benjamin Armstrong, Matthew D. Wilson, Nichola J. Lowe

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

This paper provides an overview of the manufacturing work experience of different racial groups. Our goal is to lend support to “middle-out” policy responses that seek to promote greater economic opportunity across the country through targeted sector growth, including manufacturing, while also bringing together people of all races in support of manufacturing regeneration. By pinpointing persistent inequities in U.S. manufacturing, we hope to embolden policy responses that ensure that as the manufacturing sector rebounds and continues to evolve, its high-paying, good-quality jobs are also more inclusive of workers of color.

Scoring Soar, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

This paper estimates the benefits and costs of the incentive package provided to the proposed Ford battery plant in Marshall, Michigan. This project, announced in February 2023, involves a state and local business incentive package whose undiscounted value is $1.7 billion, and which is awarded to a plant that will eventually create 2,500 permanent jobs. The incentive package is analyzed using the Bartik Benefit-Cost Model of Incentives. The model’s estimates suggest that the incentive package has economic benefits whose present value is over 1.8 times the project’s incentive costs. Most of these benefits are higher earnings per capita for Michigan …

Unemployment Insurance: Fix It And Fund It, Christopher J. O'Leary, David E. Balducchi, Ralph E. Smith

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

During the 2020–2021 pandemic, the federal-state unemployment insurance (UI) system in the United States nearly reached the breaking point. The surge in joblessness was matched in history only by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Congress hurriedly crafted temporary pandemic benefit assistance programs to fill benefit and eligibility gaps in state-run UI programs, handing them off to capacity-starved state UI agencies that fitfully served millions of workers and employers. After years of policy neglect and contraction, state UI programs have low benefit recipiency, meager earnings replacement rates, and inadequate benefit financing. It is time for comprehensive federal UI reform legislation, …

Seize The Time: Needed Research On Local Economic Development In An Era Of Increased Attention To Problems Of Place, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

With the increased attention to place-based policies comes an increased need for policy-relevant research on local economic development. Within the policy area of local economic development, this paper identifies five types of research needs: 1) better definitions of local labor markets; 2) policy know-how on how local economic development’s benefits can be better spread to distressed neighborhoods; 3) evidence on what types of jobs have both good growth prospects in the U.S. economy yet also provide good long-run job opportunities in local labor markets for the majority of U.S. workers who lack a bachelor’s degree; 4) estimates of how local …

How Federal Pandemic Relief Helped Replenish State Unemployment Reserves, Christopher J. O'Leary, Kenneth J. Kline

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

Unemployment insurance (UI) is a joint federal-state program that pays temporary partial earnings replacement to involuntarily unemployed workers while they seek reemployment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, UI claims surged and became a primary source for income replacement for workers who lost their jobs. However, despite previous federal incentives for states to shore up their UI funding reserves, the scale of claims during the pandemic was unprecedented, and the federal government needed to step in to help pay not only for direct, expanded benefits but for additional assistance to states themselves. Although this effort helped backstop the successful operation of states’ …

Equity In Unemployment Insurance Benefit Access, Christopher J. O'Leary, William E. Spriggs, Stephen A. Wandner

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

This paper examines the uneven pattern of access to unemployment insurance (UI) by age, gender, and race across the United States. We present results from a descriptive analysis using publicly available longitudinal data reported by states on rates of UI recipiency and characteristics of UI beneficiaries. Recipiency measures the proportion of all unemployed who are receiving UI benefits. UI is intended to provide temporary, partial income replacement to involuntarily unemployed UI applicants with strong labor force attachments while they are able, available, and actively seeking return to work. Each of these UI eligibility conditions contributes to the UI recipiency rate …

How College Enrollment Changed For Kalamazoo Promise Students Between Fall 2019 And Fall 2020, Daniel Collier, Isabel Mcmullen, Brad J. Hershbein

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

The COVID-19 pandemic greatly reduced the college enrollment rate for students during the Fall 2020 semester. National data show that although enrollment of new students declined overall, it varied substantially by institution type and student characteristics. What national data do not reveal is how certain communities with already high college-going rates responded to the pandemic. We use data from Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS) and the tuition-free program the Kalamazoo Promise to compare the immediate college enrollment of graduating high school students from the class of 2019 to that of the class of 2020. Overall, immediate college enrollment of KPS graduates …

Broadening Place-Based Jobs Policies: How To Both Target Job Creation And Broaden Its Reach, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

Many places in the United States are distressed in that they have low “employment rates” (employment to population ratios). In my recent report for the Brookings Metro Policy program (Bartik 2020b), I proposed helping the most distressed local labor markets, comprising 15 percent of the U.S. population, by a federal block grant of $11 billion annually to provide public services to create local jobs. The present policy paper outlines how this block grant can be broadened, while remaining targeted. The block grant is broadened by adding $3 billion for more moderately distressed local labor markets, comprising an additional 15 percent …

Bringing Jobs To People: Improving Local Economic Development Policies, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

Many local labor markets in the United States suffer from low employment rates, but getting people to move out of these distressed areas is difficult. Moreover, moving people to job-rich regions does not help those left behind, as out-migration destroys jobs in distressed areas. A better way to help the residents of distressed areas is through local economic development policies that boost job growth and employment rates in a sustained fashion. Such policies can successfully encourage local business and job growth through business tax incentives, cash grants, or customized public services, such as advice to small businesses, job training, infrastructure …

What Can We Learn From The 1918 Pandemic? Careful Economics And Policy Lessons From Influenza, Brian J. Asquith

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

Economists and policymakers have turned to the 1918 Spanish flu for guidance on the COVID-19 crisis, and some have been cheered by the example of its sharp post-pandemic economic recovery. Policymakers have also been encouraged to use lockdowns and school closures (called non-pharmaceutical interventions, or NPIs) in part by research showing that 1918’s NPIs saved lives while aiding the subsequent economic recovery. I review a wide range of research to caution that our own recovery will likely be harder and slower because of how the economy has evolved. I conclude by discussing pro-recovery policy that account for post-1918 economic changes.

Place-Based Policy: An Essay In Two Parts, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

Place-based policies that increase jobs in local labor markets can have large benefits, but current policies need reforms. Local job growth can have large benefits by increasing local employment-to-population ratios (employment rates). These employment rate benefits are larger if jobs are created in local labor markets that are distressed, or if new jobs are matched to the local nonemployed. Current place-based policies are mostly business tax incentives, provided by state and local governments. These incentives are costly per job actually created by the incentive. More cost-effective job creation are public services to businesses, such as customized job training or business …

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) …

The Role Of Sectoral Initiatives In Solving The Employment Problems Of Opportunity Youth, Kevin Hollenbeck

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

An estimated 6.7 million individuals in the United States are between the ages of 16 and 24 and are not employed, not in school, and have not earned a postsecondary credential. This paper examines the extent to which sectoral initiatives, which operate on the demand side of the labor market, can play a role in facilitating pathways into productive careers for these individuals, who we refer to in the paper as opportunity youth (OY). It is mainly a review of the literature about the effectiveness of workforce development sectoral initiatives and other programs specifically focused on OY. It first reviews …

Say Pays! Shareholder Voice And Firm Performance, Maria Guadalupe, Vicente Cuñat, Mireia Gine

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

This paper estimates the effect of increasing shareholder “voice” in corporations through a new governance rule that provides shareholders with a regular vote on pay: Say on Pay. We apply a regression discontinuity design to Say on Pay shareholder proposals to deal with prior expectations and the endogeneity of internal governance rules. Adopting Say on Pay leads to large increases in market value (5.4 percent), firm profitability, and long-term performance. In contrast, we find small effects on the level and structure of pay. This suggests that Say on Pay operates as a regular confidence vote, increasing efficiency, and market value.

The Impact Of The Kalamazoo Promise On College Choice: An Analysis Of Kalamazoo Area Math And Science Center Graduates, Michelle Miller-Adams, Bridget Timmeney

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

The Kalamazoo Promise has led to a pronounced shift in the college-going patterns of Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS) students who attend the Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center (KAMSC). Following the introduction of the Kalamazoo Promise in 2005, the percentage of KPS KAMSC students attending public, in-state institutions of higher education has almost doubled—a shift that reflects the program rules of the Promise, which covers tuition and fees only at public postsecondary institutions in Michigan. The percentage of non-KPS KAMSC students attending an in-state, public institution also rose in the post-2006 period but only very slightly, suggesting that the Promise …

Public Pension Crisis And Investment Risk Taking: Underfunding, Fiscal Constraints, Public Accounting, And Policy Implications, Nancy Mohan, Ting Zhang

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

Public pension funds that cover retirement benefits for almost 20 million active or retired employees have been significantly underfunded. An important, though largely overlooked, issue related to pension underfunding is the excessive investment risk levels assumed by public plans. Our analysis suggests government accounting standards strongly affect public fund investment risk, as higher return assumptions (used to discount pension liabilities) are associated with higher investment risk. Public funds undertake more risk if they are underfunded and have lower investment returns in previous years, consistent with the risk transfer hypothesis. Furthermore, pension funds in states facing fiscal constraints allocate more assets …

Work Hours In Retail: Room For Improvement, Françoise J. Carré, Chris Tilly

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

With full-time jobs, hourly wages are appropriate primary indicators of job quality. However, in sectors where full-time schedules do not dominate, total hours matter for job quality and worker outcomes. We explored hour levels and trends in retail trade and its largest subsector, grocery stores. Retail is known for part-time and short shifts. With a comparison of retail hours in three countries—the United States, Canada, and Mexico—we contribute insights into aspects of the U.S. policy and regulatory systems that could be altered in order to improve retail jobs.

Resolving America's Human Capital Paradox: A Jobs Compact For The Future, Thomas A. Kochan

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

It is widely recognized that human capital is essential to sustaining a competitive economy at high and rising living standards. Yet acceptance of persistent high unemployment, stagnant wages, and other indicators of declining job quality suggests that policymakers and employers undervalue human capital. This paper traces the root cause of this apparent paradox to the primacy afforded shareholder value over human resource considerations in American firms and the longstanding gridlock over employment policy. I suggest that a new jobs compact will be needed to close the deficit in jobs lost in the recent recession and to achieve sustained real wage …

Options For Addressing Long-Term Unemployment As The Economy Recovers, Ralph E. Smith

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

The recent recession and its aftermath have once again demonstrated the importance of the unemployment insurance system as a vital part of the nation’s safety net. But some facets of the program are in need of repair, including the high rate at which recipients run out of regular benefits, even in a strong labor market. Since the mid-1970s, the exhaustion rate has increased by three to four percentage points per decade, after adjusting for cyclical variation and temporary benefit extensions. This brief, drawing on an extensive review of research on the secular rise in UI exhaustions and programs designed to …

Occupational Licensing: Protecting The Public Interest Or Protectionism?, Morris M. Kleiner

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

The issue of the government regulation of occupations involves the role of government in reconciling the special interests of the practitioners with those of society. The strictest form of occupational regulation is occupational licensing which is extensive and growing. In 2008, nearly 30 percent of the workforce was required to hold a license up from around 10 percent in 1970. There are potential job loss implications in the growth of occupational licensing for the labor market and the economy. An alternative form of regulation, the certification of occupations, which does not impose a "closed shop" on entry and mobility, may …

The Lack Of Persistence Of Employee Contributions To Their 401(K) Plans May Lead To Insufficient Retirement Savings, Leslie A. Muller, John A. Turner

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

Many workers save for retirement through 401(k) plans. This study addresses the concern that low account balances of older workers may indicate that these vehicles are not sufficient to insure adequate retirement savings. In particular, the study shows that while they are accumulating these plans, workers are not persistent in contributing, and a weak stock market exacerbates the problem.

Inertia does not seem to hold for 401(k) saving behavior. Furthermore, the investment strategy of dollar cost averaging does not seem to hold, either. Using four biennial waves of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) covering a six-year …

Unemployment Insurance And Low-Educated Single Working Mothers Before And After Welfare Reform, H. Luke Shaefer, Liyun Wu, Elizabeth Phillips

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

No abstract provided.

Lessons Learned From A State-Funded Workplace Literacy Program, Kevin Hollenbeck, Bridget Timmeney

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

Findings from an evaluation of a workplace literacy program funded by the State of Indiana are presented. Working with employers, providers were given considerable latitude to design their own training regimens. The state awarded certificates to workers who achieved certain levels of proficiency in reading, math, critical thinking, problem solving (assessed by CASAS), and computer literacy (certified by IC3). The evaluation relied on qualitative and quantitative data. Multiple site visits were undertaken and a survey of participants (n = 1,800), learning gains, and earnings histories were quantitatively analyzed. Key findings include a significant interest in college attendance by incumbent workers, …