Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:
A briefing report from The Brookings Institution uses new data from the Census Bureau to show how the recession has slowed long-distance mobility and the movement of educated young people from one part of the country to another.
In mid-decade, top migration destinations numerically for young adults were interior West growth centers—Riverside, CA and Phoenix—and a mix of economically vibrant places like Houston, Atlanta and Charlotte.
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By the late 2000s, four of the top five mid-decade magnets were replaced. Austin rose to the lead, and two other relatively vibrant Texas metros, Dallas and Houston, moved up the list. Other rising areas like Denver, Seattle and Portland, tended to be knowledge-based cities with lifestyles attractive to young people.
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Yet rates of gain for many popular metros are generally not as high as in mid-decade and many older Northern and coastal areas continue to hold on to young people who would otherwise be fleeing to opportunities elsewhere.
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The recent more tentative migration patterns of the younger and “best and brightest” segments of our population are holding back the free flow of human and social capital that has made our society more vital and dynamic than most of our developed country peers. This slowdown, in addition to the decline in immigration can be expected to pick up when the economy revives. But if it takes too long, we run the risk of creating a “lost generation” of young adults, the likes of which we have not seen for some time.
A new briefing paper from the Economic Policy Institute looks at the importance of postsecondary education and explains why more education, by itself, can’t reduce unemployment or inequality.
That being said, the challenge we face with high and persistent unemployment exceeding 9% is not better education and training for those currently unemployed. Rather, we need more jobs. Moreover, the reason we have seen a huge increase in wage and income inequality over the last 30 years is not a shortfall in the skills and education of the workforce. Workers face a “wage deficit” much more than a “skills deficit.”
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Moving forward, our primary challenge is not generating a greatly expanded supply of college graduates because otherwise employers will not have a sufficient number available to them. Rather, we need to provide access to further education (i.e., college completion) for the many working class and minority children who are now excluded from it so they can have a full opportunity to compete for the jobs that require such an education. Greatly expanding the pool of college graduates may help to lessen wage and income inequalities, but it will do so by forcing young college graduates to take jobs with lower pay and benefits than earlier cohorts and by pushing downward the average college graduate’s earnings (especially those of men). Those with advanced degrees will continue to see their salaries rise, but that group is only about a tenth of the workforce and even with rapid expansion its share will only rise slowly.
Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:
For the benefit week ending on January 1st, 34,923 North Carolinians filed initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits, and 159,674 individuals applied for state-funded continuing benefits. Compared to the prior week, there were more initial and continuing claims. These figures come from data released by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Averaging new and continuing claims over a four-week period — a process that helps adjust for seasonal fluctuations and better illustrates trends — shows that an average of 21,740 initial claims were filed over the previous four weeks, along with an average of 139,061 continuing claims. Compared to the previous four-week period, there were more initial and continuing claims.
One year ago, the four-week average for initial claims stood at 26,738 and the four-week average of continuing claims equaled 208,010.
While the number of claims has dropped over the past year so has covered employment. Last week, covered employment totaled 3.7 million, down from 3.9 million a year ago.
The graph (right) shows the changes in unemployment insurance claims (as a share of covered employment) in North Carolina since the recession’s start in December 2007.
Both new and continuing claims appear to have peaked for this cycle, and the four-week averages of new and continuing claims have fallen considerably. Yet continuing claims remain at an elevated level, which suggests that unemployed individuals are finding it difficult to find new positions. Also, new claims generally have been on the rise since the end of September.
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