Almost everyone is saying the unemployment rate is a problem. At 6.6% and with job creation at 113,000, the numbers reflect a troubled jobs market. The problem, though, might be the statistic. We began collecting employment statistics during the 1880s.…
A Surprising Connection Between Tennessee and the Affordable Care Act
There is probably a tradeoff between health insurance and the demand for jobs. During 2005 in Tennessee, the demand for jobs increased when 170,000 people lost their Medicaid health insurance coverage. Researchers call that jobs/health insurance tie, the “employment lock.” Looking at…
Brazil’s World Cup To-Do List
Preparing its transportation infrastructure for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, Brazil has one giant to-do list. In the air and on the ground, it has the participants, the officials and the fans that have to be moved around.…
Have We Halved the Deficit?
In the State-of-the-Union, President Obama said, “Our deficits–cut by more than half.” Looking at the federal deficit as a percent of GDP, we can say that the deficit is much lower than 4 years ago. BUT… The deficit was an unusually…
One Reason That $1.1 Trillion is Not So Much
The Congress just agreed on $1.1 trillion in federal spending. But let’s look a bit more closely… Each year, I give my class a federal budget graph and ask them to identify the relative size of 17 main spending categories.…
One Way That the “Poor Beat the Rich”
In just 8 minutes, Hans Rosling shows us that, with child mortality rates, the developing world is making more progress than we might expect. With his captivating “gapminder” approach, he creates a race between Sweden in 1900 and Bangladesh in…
The Revolution That Grandma Started
The NYC Miss Subways competition was about a lot more than pretty “girls” (as they were called). To become Miss Subways for a month, applicants had to submit a picture to the John Robert Powers Agency. From perhaps 1000 applicants,…
Connecting Abigail Adams to Janet Yellen
Reading about “touch generations” in Sam Arbesman’s Wired Magazine blog, I realized that Abigail Adams and Janet Yellen were connected. Different generations touch when one’s birth year coincides with someone else’s death. Born in 1744, Abigail Adams died in 1818, the year that Karl Marx was…
The Green Blog: Why Japan Might Face a Demographic Crisis
By Madeleine Vance, guest blogger and student at Kent Place School. As of late, younger Japanese citizens are choosing to live the single life rather than get married. But why? Seven years ago, Japan’s population climaxed at 128 million, but…
Which College Grads Have Unemployment Problems?
With a 6.7% unemployment rate and 74,000 jobs created for December, are you okay if you have a bachelor’s degree? I discovered some answers in a new paper from the NY Fed. Unemployment and underemployment for recent college graduates have been…