April 2024 Jobs Report: Steady-As-She-Goes Labor Market
The BLS estimated that the US economy added 175,000 jobs in February, with the unemployment rate ticking up from 3.7% to 3.9%. Three things stood out from this report. 1. Job Growth Ticks Down After Recent Strength After a string of stronger-than-expected employment gains, job growth cooled down this month. The 175,000 jobs added fell ...
April 2024 CPI Report: A Step in the Right Direction
The Consumer Price Index rose at a 3.4% annual pace in April 2024, and 3.6% for all items excluding food and energy. Three things stood out from this report. 1. Inflation softens, after stickiness to start off the year Annual inflation, as measured in the CPI, started the year near a post-COVID low of 3.1% ...
May 2024 Jobs Report: Mixed Messages in the Job Market
The BLS estimated that the US economy added 272,000 jobs in February, with the unemployment rate ticking up from 3.9% to 4.0%. Three things stood out beneath the headlines of this report. 1. Job Growth Accelerates Today’s estimate of 272,000 jobs added substantially beat the consensus market forecasts of 180,000, and by all measures is ...
May 2024 CPI Report: Can the US Economy Have it All?
The Consumer Price Index rose at a 3.3% annual pace in May 2024, and 3.4% for all items excluding food and energy. Three things stood out from this report. 1. Inflation Softens More Than Expected Overall, consumer prices were unchanged from April to May and rose by 3.3% over the past year. Core CPI, excluding ...
Rising Childlessness is Driving the Decline in Birth Rates in the United States
The United States has experienced a dramatic decline in birth rates, starting in 2007 and continuing through recent years. This post updates and expands on findings in Kearney, Levine, Pardue (2020), The Puzzle of Falling Birth Rates in the United States, which concludes that the decline in birth rates has been fueled more by a ...
June 2024 Jobs Report: Entering a New Phase of the Job Market
The BLS estimated that the US economy added 206,000 jobs in June, with the unemployment rate ticking up from 4.0% to 4.1%. Three things stood out beneath the headlines of this report. 1. Revisions to April and May Show a Softer Job Market While the topline number of 206,000 jobs added in June was about ...
The Hill Op-Ed: How to fight poverty and boost work with an enhanced Child Tax Credit
The president’s 2024 budget, released today, calls for reinstating the 2021 expansion of the Child Tax Credit, which dramatically reduced child poverty. The temporary effect of that one-year expansion on poverty rates was a remarkable feat — instead of what surely would have been an increase in child poverty while the economy was still weak, we saw a reduction ...
Financial Times Op-Ed: America’s slowing population growth is here to stay
The US faces a demographic challenge that many other high-income countries have been facing for decades: below replacement level fertility. As American adults are choosing to have fewer children than previous generations did, the nation faces the prospect of slower population growth. Though some celebrate a decline in births as good news for the planet, ...
Brookings Institution: Six reasons why an expanded Child Tax Credit or child allowance should be part of the US safety net
The Child Tax Credit has been part of the federal income tax code since 1997. It has been expanded many times, most recently as part of the American Rescue Plan. Under this plan, for the year 2021, the maximum Child Tax Credit amount is increased from $2,000 per child to $3,600 for children below the age of 6 ...