FEATURED POST
June 25, 2025
More paydays, more fairness? How pay frequency shapes worker perceptions of compensation
Are more paydays better, even if the money is the same? According to workers, the short answer is yes, and both workers and employers can benefit. The reasons boil down to how workers perceive fairness.
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June 24, 2025
From good to gloom. Main Street is bracing for a slowdown.
By almost every metric that matters, the U.S. economy has delivered in the first six months of 2025. Unemployment stayed low, consumers kept spending, and inflation retreated. Despite this encouraging performance, the economic outlook has dimmed. When Federal Reserve policymakers met last week to decide whether to cut interest rates, their individual forecasts combined painted a cautious picture.
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June 17, 2025
Where have all the workers gone?
Every now and then, it’s worth taking a break from rapidly changing economic developments to focus on long-term trends affecting the world of work. One long, slow change we’ve been living through for years is the evolution of labor market participation in the United States.
The unemployment rate grabs most of the attention every month as an indicator of the health of the labor market because it tells us how easy, or difficult, it is for people to find jobs.
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June 10, 2025
The big deal about small employers
Last week, ADP data showed that employers with fewer than 50 workers shed a large number of jobs—13,000—in May. While one month doesn’t make a trend, it does remind us of the big role small employers play in our economy. So, when it comes to the macroeconomy, what’s the big deal with small employers? Here are three reasons small businesses have an outsized impact on the U.S. labor market.
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May 28, 2025
“The Age of Work”, part two: The country’s youngest workforce
In the past two decades, the median age of workers in the United States has risen from 40.3 years to 42.4. It might not sound like a big change, but it’s having a big effect. This aging workforce is one reason the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that annual U.S. employment growth will slow to just 0.4 percent over the next decade, less than a third of the 1.3 percent annual growth recorded between 2013 and 2023.
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May 21, 2025
Summertime: For some employers, it’s no picnic
by Sam Adieze
Summer paints a vivid picture. For many Americans, it’s a season of relaxation and adventure. But for employers, especially those in retail and leisure and hospitality, it’s a period of heightened labor demand and a less-visible struggle with high worker turnover.
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May 20, 2025
Boomerang hiring makes a comeback
The 2025 job market has been remarkably steady. Initial jobless claims are near historical lows, the unemployment rate is hovering just above 4 percent, and fewer people are quitting their jobs than before the pandemic.
The U.S. workforce is largely staying put, but one set of employees is on the move, and they’re returning to their previous employers.
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May 13, 2025
High-frequency smoke signals
The economy’s smoke signals are sending a confusing message about its health.
Growth slowed by 0.3 percent in the first three months of 2025. Yet in April, the economy produced a robust 177,000 jobs. Unemployment is steady, but in the first quarter, labor productivity contracted for the first time in three years. The pace of inflation, though slower than it was, is stickier than economists would like.
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May 6, 2025
The power and puzzle of productivity
This week, all eyes will be on Federal Reserve policymakers and their decision to cut, raise, or stand pat on interest rates. But there’s another data point that could have an even greater impact on the economic and inflation outlook for 2025: productivity.
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