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Casey Mulligan on Employment

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Casey Mulligan's blog is a gold mine. My two highlights are his two latest blogs.

First, he points out that, according to the household employment data, seasonally adjusted employment last month fell by about 400,000. He attributes some of this to the increase in the minimum wage in late July. Too bad he didn't give us a back-of-the-envelope (BOTE) estimate. My gut BOTE estimate is that about half of the increase is due to the increase in the minimum wage. I'll do the actual BOTE on Labor Day, when I have more time and energy.

Second, he points out that, according to the payroll data, 49.9 percent of jobs in August were held by women. If this holds up, it's a record.

CATEGORIES: Labor Market

COMMENTS (1 to date)

Latest Comment

Jeff Hanson writes:

Huh, I seem to remember 2001-2003 that employment/unemployment stats were thrown around as generalizations by the media (jobless recovery), while alternative sources of media at least drew attention to and dug deeper into the numbers for greater insight; what are household employment rates, what are structural versus cyclical employment rates, etc. Sure this greater insight was used to pursuade, but at least those that chose to engage may have learned something about policy choice and economic results.

The stats are still there; the media stick to their story, and still the lesson of policy decisions remains unseen and unknown to the greater population.

Shameful.

Posted September 6, 2009 11:08 PM

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