Moving the Needle: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor

This investigation reveals how sustained tight labor markets improve the job prospects and life chances of Americas most vulnerable households, drawing on over seventy years of quantitative data and interviews with employers, jobseekers, and longtime residents of poor neighborhoods. It calls for policies to maintain the current momentum and prepare for potential slowdowns.

Format: Hardback
Length: 376 pages
Publication date: 02 May 2023
Publisher: University of California Press

Sustained tight labor markets have a significant impact on the job prospects and life chances of America's most vulnerable households. While most research on poverty focuses on the damage caused by persistent unemployment, 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 and 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.

Weight: 635g
Dimension: 229 x 152 x 33 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780520379107