John Schmitt

To many economists, the unemployment insurance system is, at best, a necessary evil: The system helps laid-off workers survive hard times, but at the cost of economic efficiency. Unemployment benefits, the argument goes, reduce the incentive that unemployed workers have to seek and accept new jobs. But a new study concludes that the nation’s unemployment […]

Free markets are supposed to have made the United States the world’s most fertile ground for entrepreneurial activity. So how come only about 8 percent of Americans are self-employed, compared with much higher self-employment rates in countries alleged to suffer from “Eurosclerosis?” The United States, for example, trails Belgium (15 percent), France (11 percent), Germany […]

Business opponents of the minimum wage often argue that it is little more than an “entry-level” wage–water-wings for those workers taking their first dip in the labor pool–and therefore needn’t be high enough to sustain a worker over many years. A recent study by two government economists, William Carrington at the Bureau of Labor Statistics […]

With unemployment at a 30-year low, opponents of current proposals to raise the minimum wage by a dollar to $6.15 an hour will be hard-pressed to argue such a move will cost low-wage workers their jobs. But what about that other stock argument that a higher minimum will reduce training for low-wage workers? New research […]