The latest report from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that unemployment shot up to 6.4 percent in June, the highest rate in nine years. But an even more chilling statistic is that for 24 months (and counting), employment is lower than it was one year before. The result has been the longest private-sector employment […]
Barry Bluestone
Barry Bluestone is the Stearns Trustee Professor of Political Economy and Director of the Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Rewarding Work: Feasible Antipoverty Policy
A higher minimum wage and the earned income tax credit fit like puzzle pieces, each compensating for the other’s flaws. Together they are our best bet to fight poverty.
Posted inWorking in America
Overworked and Underemployed
A t least since the 1980s people have said that they work “too hard”-that they are spending too much time on the job, with too little left for family, chores, or leisure. In 1991 this frustration became conventional wisdom thanks to Juliet Schor’s best-seller, The Overworked American, which demonstrated that Americans worked an average of […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
Why We Can Grow Faster
F rom the early-nineteenth-century introduction of steam power through the dawning of the age of the microchip in the post-World War II era, real economic growth in America averaged 3.8 percent per year. That meant economic output doubled roughly every 19 years. Then after the 1970s, growth collapsed. During the 1980s, growth averaged just 2.7 […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Inequality Express
While the trend toward greater inequality is no longer in doubt, recent work in the social sciences suggests a number of possible explanations. We can now begin to sort them out.
Posted inEducation in America
Generational Alliance: Social Security as a Bank for Education and Training
The solvency of Social Security ultimately depends on economic prosperity, and economic prosperity on productivity and education. College costs, however, are becoming prohibitive, and technical training is weak. Investing part of the Social Security