Emmanuel Saez on income distribution

Congrats to Emmanuel Saez earning the 2009 John Bates Clark Medal.

One of his key contributions is showing us what is happening at the (upper) tail of the income distribution.

Joe Biden, Live from NY (SNL style)

Debt details. In pictures

From the CRS report, The Federal Government Debt: Its Size and Economic Significance, 2007.

See p. 5 for composition and debt holders.
See p. 7 for interest payments vs. economic growth.

Job Openings and Unemployment

Job Openings and Unemployment

By Aaron Pacitti

10 November, 2009

The October employment situation showed an increase in the unemployment rate from 9.8% to 10.2%. Similar, but more dramatic, was the rise in the labor underutilization rate—what the BLS calls U-6, which includes unemployed workers, marginally attached workers, discouraged workers, and involuntary part-time employment. This measure rose from 17.0% to 17.5%. U-6 is the broadest and most comprehensive measure of labor market slack.

Today, the BLS released its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for September 2009. The data, presented in Figure 1, show an increase of 104,000 job openings from August to September.

The above picture suggests that the decrease in job openings may be leveling off, though nowhere near the level needed to provide a sustainable and substantial labor market recovery. For example, there are 6.8 unemployed worker for every job opening. Additionally, there are 12.2 underemployed workers (taken from the measure of U-6) for every job opening. These trends are shown in Figure 2.

Each of these measures shows a slight decrease and a potential leveling off in the number of unemployed and underemployed workers per job opening. While this is a welcome development, one must be cautious for two reasons. First, to the extent that the economy is recovering from the Great Recession, this recovery is and will continue to be fragile. There are ample signs that we could be in for a double-dip recession, or a W-shaped growth path. For example, the commercial real estate bubble is beginning to show signs of popping and the residential real estate bubble has been artificially inflated by the home-buyers tax credit. Continued weakness on both consumers’ and firms’ balance sheets suggest that recovery will be far from robust. Indeed, personal bankruptcies rose 28% since October 2008 and banks continue to tighten lending standards. Secondly, such intense completion for jobs will almost certainly keep wages depressed for the foreseeable future. This, too, will depress consumption levels and cause the recovery to be more fragile than it otherwise would be.

Taken as a whole, the uptick in job openings and the decline in the number of unemployed and underemployed workers per job opening should not be taken as a sign of labor market recovery. While these trends could portend a modest rebound in the labor market, aggregate economic conditions are working against a sustained labor market recovery.

Job Losses from Defense Spending

As usual, Dean Baker puts ridiculous arguments in the proper context.

The Job Loss from Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Job Loss from Defense Spending

from Real-World Economics Review Blog by deanbaker1

There is a major national ad campaign, funded by the oil industry and other usual suspects, to convince the public that measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and slow global warming will result in massive job loss. This ad campaign warns of slower growth and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, possibly even millions of jobs, if some variation of the current proposals being debated by Congress get passed into law.

Interest rates from the bottom of the trough

The Times story on the Fed's latest perspective:

Fed Sees No Need to Raise Interest Rates Soon
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve signaled on Wednesday it was not close to raising interest rates, saying that the economy remained weak even though the recession appeared to be over.

The central bank said it would keep its benchmark interest rate at virtually zero, and it made no change to its longstanding mantra that economic conditions were likely to warrant “exceptionally low” rates for “an extended period.”

Must be a deep hole. More and a pic from the SF Fed via Economist's View.

Dumb and Dumber on Stimulus Jobs

Aaron Pacitti directs us to the business of trying to count exacltly which jobs were saved:

Dumb and Dumber on Stimulus Jobs,
from Dean Baker's Beat the Press.

There is a cottage industry developing among political reporters trying to investigate whether the Obama administration’s claims on jobs created or “saved” by the stimulus are true.

Spring 20010 Courses

Spring 2010 upper division course offerings in Economics:

(prerequisites in parentheses)

Required: ECON 201 - Micro Analysis. (QBUS 100 & 110 strongly advised)

Electives:

ECON 300 - Topics: Political Economy (101 or 102) - This course examines how political and economic forces interact to influence the character and outcome of domestic economic policies.

ECON 340 - Environmental Economics (101) - An examination of how the natural environment is affected by the economic activities of society, and the physical and biological limitations imposed on the economy by the natural environment.

ECON 420 - Business Financial Forecasting (QBUS 200) - This course explores the nature and causes of fluctuations in aggregate business activity and the technique used to forecast.

ECON 490 - Seminar: Capital Flows to Developing Countries (201 and 202 or permission) - In this course, we will look at the roles of foreign aid, migrant remittances, and foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries.

Note: ECON 202 (Macro analysis) and ECON 430 (Econometrics) are offered fall semesters only; ECON 201 is offered spring semesters only.