Moving the Needle: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the PoorThis timely investigation reveals how sustained tight labor markets improve the job prospects and life chances of America’s most vulnerable households. Most research on poverty focuses on the damage caused by persistent unemployment. But what happens when jobs are plentiful and workers are hard to come by? Moving the Needle examines how very low unemployment boosts wages at the bottom, improves benefits, lengthens job ladders, and pulls the unemployed into a booming job market. Drawing on over seventy years of quantitative data, as well as interviews with employers, jobseekers, and longtime residents of poor neighborhoods, Katherine S. Newman and Elisabeth S. Jacobs investigate the most durable positive consequences of tight labor markets. They also consider the downside of overheated economies that can ignite surging rents and spur outmigration. Moving the Needle is an urgent and original call to implement policies that will maintain the current momentum and prepare for potential slowdowns that may lie ahead. |
Contents
The Dynamics of Tight Labor Markets | 16 |
What Lasts? Durable Effects of Tight Labor Markets | 37 |
How Employers Adapt to Tight | 50 |
Leaning on Intermediaries | 74 |
Entering from the Edge | 104 |
Declining Drama | 129 |
Family and Fortune | 171 |
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American benefits Black workers blog Boston business cycle Census Center create criminal records dasymetric mapping decline earnings economic effects employed employers Employment-to-population ratio especially exposure families federal poverty line Federal Reserve Franklin Franklin Hill Gentrification going Harding Heartward Bound high school degree high-pressure higher hiring managers Hispanic households housing impact improve income increase individuals industry inequality Institute IPUMS job openings joblessness jobseekers Journal Katherine Newman labor force participation labor market intermediaries living look low unemployment low-wage workers Marginal marriage median Median household income Melanie minimum wage mobility move NAIRU neighborhood opportunity outcomes pandemic parents percent period Pew Research Center poor population poverty line PSID racial Recession residents returning citizens Roxbury Crossing sector skills social stability tight labor markets tion Tract unem unemployed unemployment rate urban women workforce