Labor Economist, Assistant Professor at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,
Labor and Employment Relations School and Department of Economics
Mar 8, 2021 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
📢 Very excited to announce I have updated my memo on unemployment insurance recipiency among the unemployed! 📢
publish.illinois.edu/elizaforsythe/…
In this revision, I expand my analysis to all of 2020-2021. As before, I use the Understanding America Survey (disclaimer: The content of the memo is solely my responsibility and does not necessarily represent the official views of USC or UAS. ) 2/
Mar 7, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This week in my Future of Work class, the topic was managing tech. change, so I taught the excellent AT&T switchboard operators case by @dgross03 and @william_r_kerr. 1/
store.hbr.org/product/at-t-m…
Fun fact: AT&T took decades to switch to dial technology, in part because they thought consumers would have a hard time learning how to use dial phones. Which of course, few of our current students would know how to use. 2/
Feb 1, 2021 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
New policy memo on unemployment insurance coverage! TLDR: only 24% of unemployed workers surveyed in December/January 2021 had received UI benefits in the prior 2 weeks. 😱 1/
publish.illinois.edu/elizaforsythe/…
This uses data from @UAS_CESR Covid panel (note: this is my own analysis and does not reflect the views of USC or UAS.). I focus on the most recent wave of the survey, see the memo for details. 2/
Jan 8, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A couple of thoughts on the jobs report. As many have noted, payroll data shows a decline in employment, but the household survey finds the unemployment rate hasn't changed. This is not unusual, they are measuring different things and are samples so will have variation. 1/
The household survey shows temporary layoffs have increased for the first month since spring. This is consistent with the decline in employment from the payroll data, and signals a new wave of labor market decline. 2/
Jan 7, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
There's been lots of discussion about how to reform the unemployment insurance system. One group that is left out are new labor market entrants. These workers don't have the work history to qualify for standard UI benefits but are some of the hardest hit by recessions 1/
I show this in two papers. In "Why Don't Firms Hire Young Workers During Recessions?" I show that new labor market entrants disproportionately bear the brunt of reduced hiring during recessions, likely bc employers prefer experienced hires. 2/
Many were surprised to PUA claims overtake standard UI claims this week in the UI data. Here is a thread with some data about the PUA program 1/
First, the data in the weekly claims reports from the DOL appear to include many claims that don't show up in the monthly ETA data on actual claims paid, so take the weekly news release with a grain of salt. 2/
