Policy Points

26.06.2012 Policy Points No Comments

The State Of Developmental Education

The PBS NewsHour reports on the problems associated with developmental education at the nation’s two-year colleges.

Watch Community Colleges Struggling With Spreading the Knowledge on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

25.06.2012 Policy Points No Comments

Around The Dial – June 25, 2012

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

25.06.2012 Policy Points No Comments

Not So Mobile In NC

A recent brief from the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center looks at the extent of economic mobility in North Carolina.

According to a recent study by the Pew Center on the States, economic mobility varies across states and regions in the United States. The study looks at individuals born from 1943 to 1958 and examines their income data during their prime working years—the 10 years between ages 35 to 39 and 45 to 49—with the most recent data coming from 2007.

In the study, North Carolinians ranked lower than Americans and Southeasterners on average in absolute mobility, which the study defined as earnings increases over the 10‐year period. The study found that North Carolinians experienced average earnings growth of 14 percent, 3 percentage points lower than the American average. North Carolina also ranked lower on upward mobility, which is defined as the ability of individuals in the bottom half of the earnings distribution to move up 10 or more percentiles over the 10‐year period. Only 26 percent of North Carolinians were upwardly mobile relative to their peers, compared to 34 percent of Americans.

The study found no notable difference in downward mobility—residents starting in the top half of the income distribution and falling by 10 percentiles or more—between North Carolina and the nation as a whole

25.06.2012 Policy Points No Comments

Skill Shortages: How Much Of A Problem Are They?

 Macroblog, the blog of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, weighs the evidence for and against the argument that the current problems in the labor market are due to skill mismatches between workers and firms.

Despite the fact that we see some evidence consistent with skill mismatch, it is far from clear that this issue is the smoking gun that explains the current anemic state of job growth. When asked if a dearth of skilled applicants is a persistent problem, our survey respondents overwhelmingly answer “yes.” But when asked if they have had more difficulty hiring over the past 12 months, the overwhelming majority answered “no”…

We infer a couple of lessons from all of this information. First, it does appear that there is a long-term skill level problem in the U.S. economy. Adopting Capelli’s definition of skill does not mean the existence of skill mismatch is a myth.

But turning to the short run, we’ve been pretty sympathetic to structural explanations for the slow pace of the recovery. Nonetheless, we have yet to find much evidence that problems with skill-mismatch are more important postrecession than they were prerecession. We’ll keep looking, but—as our colleagues at the Chicago Fed conclude in their most recent Chicago Fed Letter—so far the facts just don’t support skill gaps as the major source of our current labor market woes.

 

22.06.2012 Policy Points No Comments

Around The Dial – June 22, 2012

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest: