Fun fact about moms that is often totally lost in the childcare debate:

They are overrepresented in jobs that are facing a worker shortage.

1/ Here are the occupations with the highest NUMBER of moms working in 2021.

Right at the top: registered nurses, then teachers.
In the top 15: nursing assistants, teaching assistants, more teachers.

2/

A thread summarizing Bill Sprigg's letter to economists. Bill brings the reaction to George Floyd's murder---and the assumptions and truths it brought many to question---directly to economists, asking them to similarly question assumptions and truths.

He calls out the role of economists in perpetuating racism.

New article in WSJ discussing how many workers have been left out of the pandemic recovery because they cannot afford child care.

Good chance to review the most common questions/comments I get about child care:
1/
wsj.com/articles/price… 1. This is nothing new, Child care has always been too expensive, hard to access, and in short supply.

Agreed. A great example of this comes from World War II, when the Lanham Act helped fund child care for women working in the war.

2/

I get a lot of comments/DMs after I post about labor force issues that assert that red states work more.

The share of working age adults who have a job is nearly the same (red states had <50% Biden vote share in 2020).

Red state average: 79.64%
Blue state average: 80.09%

1/ Here are all the states lined up by the share of voters who supported Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

This is the three-month rolling average of employed workers who are not at work due to child care issues. It spikes at the start of the pandemic, declines slowly for two years, and then starts spiking again in April 2022.

We are at levels now not seen since the fall of 2020. The data are from the BLS, which you can find here. I put it the monthly share of the total employed workers share (both not seasonally adjusted).
beta.bls.gov/dataViewer/vie…

The biggest argument against the expansion of the Child Tax Credit is that it creates a work disincentive: give parents money, and parents will work less.

I find it hollow and hypocritical to the point of cruelty, considering what's at stake: a reduction in child poverty.

1/ Will some parents work less?

How to answer that question has economists in bitter, debate, which the link below summarizes well.
2/
washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/…

How many more women would work in the US if we had policies that supported working parents?

I'll walk you through my educated guess, which is around 3.5 million.
1/ In the past 12 months, the prime-age labor force participation rate for women has been 76%. There are 48.7 million women age 25-54 working.

2/

Today's tight labor market has many experts claiming we are in a worker shortage.

And after rising for fifty years, the Labor Force Participation Rate has been falling since 2000. Are people getting lazy? Are jobs getting automated? Are public benefits too generous?

1/ First, this is a rate, not a level. Over this time (1948-2022) the number of workers has grown with the population, to the 165 million we have today.

2/

Just out: Census Bureau estimates morning of poverty and income in the U.S. in 2021. The biggest headline:

Poverty, as measured by the supplemental rate, fell to a historical low of 7.8%. For children, child poverty fell by half to a historical low of 5.2%.

More in thread:
1/ But first, here's the source: the full poverty report from the Census Bureau.
census.gov/content/dam/Ce…

I'll be pulling figures from this paper.
2/

I have a new op-ed out today in Bloomberg about what insights economic research can offer into the consequences of overturning Roe v. Wade. Link below, and sources in the thread.
1/

trib.al/oD5qi9C One of the most important articles economists have written about abortion wasn't about abortion at all, it was about divorce.

It used to be the case that in order to get divorced, you had to prove fault of one party, get the permission of both parties, or both.
2/

I wrote that the Child Tax Credit is something rich kids get regardless and the expired expansion went to poor kids, which is good.

I got pushback: Shouldn't poor parents work? Don't we enable poverty by helping them?

Below: the (imo) two most misunderstood aspects of poverty.

https://twitter.com/keds_economist/status/1471151493218717701

First: there's an idea that people in poverty are some kind of permanent underclass, a fixed set of people who are different from us.

This is fairly inaccurate.
2/

Before the pandemic, the Child Tax Credit was a subsidy for middle- and upper-income parents. We rarely asked in the public sphere if those parents deserved the money or what they did with it. It's just to help parents.

It flowed mainly to rich families:
1/ And up to the income phase-outs, the richer you were, the more likely you were to receive it.
2/

How safe are workers on the job? A round up of news articles today.

washingtonpost.com/technology/202… washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/12…

What's the latest in unemployment insurance? Mostly:

1) Claims have fallen from their peak in 2020, but
2) Claims remain above their pre-pandemic level.

I don't think claims will ever reach the pre-pandemic level, and that's not because of a change in the economy. (thread)
1 The weekly claims data are a much-watched indicator of economic activity, especially during downturns.

But it reflects two things: economic activity *and* program performance. The latter has changed a lot over time.
2/

Should we invest in child care to accelerate recovery and support work in the future?

Some would argue that ~1-2 million moms who left work this recession aren't a large share of the workforce.

Interestingly, ~1-2 million was the estimated number of auto workers in 2008.
1/ The auto bailout was $80 billion (all but $9 billion was paid back). In the debate of whether to bail them out, there was no question that auto workers were not all or even most of the unemployed.

Size mattered less than importance. We wanted this industry and these jobs.
2/

Reading an article about how it's hard to hire food service workers right now. Here's four things I wish each story on this would mention:

One: What is the access to in-person schooling in the area? What is the landscape of day care closures/availability? You cannot work in a restaurant and care for children at the same time.

More than half of food service workers are women. 25% of Black women and 30% of Hispanic women work in a service occupation (which includes food).

BLS CPS tables 10 and 11
bls.gov/cps/tables.htm…

I've seen a few articles recently in which employers say they cannot find workers, and they assign blame to unemployment benefits being too generous.

This is one of the most important figures that provide context for hiring out of a recession
1/ It shows the share of job postings that required a bachelor degree (left axis) and the unemployment rate (right axis). The same relationship holds for experience. Here's the share requiring four years or more:
2/

Last night I spoke on @GBHForumNetwork and said that economists aren't perfect, aren't unbiased, and do not have all the answers.

A more succinct version: we can get things really wrong. A really formative example for me is Brooksley Born.

(thread)
1/ You can read the full story here.
abajournal.com/magazine/artic…

2/

Friday! Unsolicited Book Review!

This week:
Madame Secretary, by Madeleine Albright

t h r e a d
1/
bookshop.org/books/madam-se… (But you didn't do a review for like a month so I thought you stopped? Yes, true, often I don't realize it's friday until the workday has ended and by that point if you have a beer in hand, why tweet?)

Great article in the Monthly Labor Review about employment this recession. I'm going to walk through some highlights, starting with this excellent figure that shows the depth of each post-war recession:

The last 15 years have been truly historic.
bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/…

1/ I think this article provides answers to some of the biggest questions we've had about the labor market this recession. It couples an excellent round up of the existing research with data.
2/

I find that economics is a profession that often goes out of its way to make you feel stupid for not understanding something.

So I wanted to write this thank you thread for the heroes @stlouisfed.

1/ I started my first job as a research assistant in September 2008, the most tumultuous month of the financial crisis.

(The month has its own wikipedia page:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_fi…)

And I had absolutely no idea what was happening.
1/