What's the Best Way to Hire an Economist?
Economics departments in the U.S. and the U.K. use very different hiring processes for senior tenured positions. Which way is better?
Economics departments in the U.S. and the U.K. use very different hiring processes for senior tenured positions. Which way is better?
Much economic research stresses the role of pensions and Social Security in inducing retirement-altering the labor supply of older workers. Yet there are also demand-side effects that make firms unwilling to allow most workers to ease out.
“Okun’s law” is a much-loved rule of thumb – it links increases in the unemployment rate with decreases in output. But is it broken?
The Internets Celebrities (Dallas Penn and Rafi Kammade) appeared on our blog a while back with their video about check-cashing establishments vs. commercial banks. They’re back with another (NSFW) video, “Vend Diagram,” in which they question how the recession has affected New York’s street vendors.
I don’t usually write about macro things. But a journalist asked me about the duration of unemployment, and I checked out how this recession compares to previous ones.
For the past year, all government employees in Utah have had a four-day workweek. The results of the trial run are in, and they look good: the state says it saved $1.8 million in electrical bills, eliminating 6,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, while 82 percent of workers say they like the new scheme.
The latest employment numbers are out, and they are dreadful. Those commentators who saw “green shoots” out there had been focusing on the fact that in May, the economy “only” shed 322,000 jobs, which is good news when compared with the fact that the economy had been losing over 600,000 jobs per month in January, February, and March. Squint hard enough at the black line in my chart, and you can see why many were hopeful that job losses were slowing down.
The latest Economist has an article about an Italian firm whose workers negotiated a deal during the recession for time off with no pay cut in exchange for promises to work overtime without extra pay when the firm’s demand recovers.
The average job-seeker takes 12 weeks to find work. TIME profiles one laid-off software architect who used social networks including Facebook and Twitter to land a job in just 11 days. Will the recovery favor the internet-savvy in other fields as well? (Or: maybe this guy was just a super employee who, if he hadn’t been wasting his time tweeting, would have found a job in 10 days?)
Treasury Secretary Geithner‘s fears about unemployment appear to be disappearing fast. Or at least his personal fears. According to the prediction markets at Intrade.com, the chances that he departs his post this year have declined from a high above 40 percent to around 10 percent.
The Cardsofchange website posts photos of revamped business cards sent in by the recently laid-off. The cards, most of which are marked up in pen or marker, reflect what each person has done since losing his or her job.
A story on NPR’s All Things Considered this week dealt with St. Lucie County, Florida, whose government is trying to counter high local unemployment by requiring that 75 percent of government contracts be reserved for local firms and that the firms employ local workers. This is true for both local tax revenues and federal stimulus package funds. Even ignoring the . . .
When Japanese unemployment edged up to a three-year high of 4.4 percent in February, the government started looking for creative ways to lower it. One solution: get the unemployed out of the country by offering citizenship buyouts. The program applies only to unemployed people of Japanese descent who were born abroad but now live in Japan (they’re known as nikkei). . . .
| Fewer Americans are choosing to quit their jobs than at any time in the last eight years, the Christian Science Monitor reports. So when you do quit in this economy, you’ve got to make it special. How special? W. Neil Berrett printed his resignation letter on a huge sheet cake and submitted it to his boss. (HT: Boing Boing) . . .
I met a guy who has done a fantastic job of building up a department of economics at a major university. He is an impressive administrator, who clearly has both an absolute advantage and a comparative advantage at academic administration. I said that he will surely become a dean, then probably a university president, and would do a great job . . .
Here’s an interesting concept from blog reader Todd Palmer, who wants reader opinions as to whether his concept can work in the marketplace; and he also needs a good domain name. Todd’s idea: The site would function as a recruiting network, giving students and corporations an entirely new dimension of access to one another. Corporations would post tasks, real or . . .
Last night Jay Leno joked that only 500,000 people attended Bush‘s second inauguration, while 2 million were at Obama‘s. The reason, so he claimed, is that we now have so many more unemployed people. Good joke, but is it correct? How do unemployed people spend their time? How does unemployment affect time use in the entire economy? What is the . . .
It’s social change alright: 26 percent of working wives out-earned their working husbands in 2006, up by nearly half from 20 years ago.
Now that many more women are graduating college than men, higher-earning wives are going to become the new normal.
Ronald Reagan famously described the distinction between a recession and a depression as follows: “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours.” Right now, a few more economists might be willing to use the D-word. The “help wanted” publication for Ph.D. economists is sporting a brand new section: suspended or canceled listings. . . .
The Big Three auto companies are back in Washington this week, asking Congress for more money to keep themselves afloat — and, of course, to keep their employees employed and their retirees able to draw pension benefits. The Times reported last week on the state of the automakers’ pension plans. In a nutshell: not as bad as might be expected . . .
We’ve blogged a few times about Zillow (here and here), a website that is trying to shake up the real estate industry. I’ve made radical predictions about the future of the real estate industry. I’m hoping that Zillow will help make those prophesies come true. So to do my part (and because I am as susceptible to flattery as the . . .
Say you’re hired for a new job. At the end of a four-week training period, your new boss offers you a big bonus to quit right then. Would you stay on the job, or take the money and run? Zappos employees interact on Twitter. Think of it as an employer’s test for whether you’ve come on board for the money . . .
Please welcome our newest guest blogger, the University of Texas economist Daniel Hamermesh. In a long and distinguished career, Dan has written about everything from the economics of suicide to the impact of the “beauty premium.” Because he kept turning up on our blog, including just last week, we thought we’d invite him to come on over and stay awhile. . . .
Is use v. non-use of social networking sites leading to “digital inequality”? (Earlier) Study finds crowds can be influenced by 5% minority. Incarceration rates for crack-cocaine users on the rise. (Earlier) Biofuels expert named among the “fastest growing” jobs of 2008. (Earlier)
The conventional employer wisdom has always been that a happy employee is a more productive employee. Countless dollars are spent every year on initiatives to raise employee morale, create camaraderie in the workplace, and eliminate practices that could lead to a hostile work environment, all so that companies can boost their retention rates and productivity levels. So is it really . . .