The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented economic and policy challenges to the United States and other countries. Navigating out of the pandemic slowdown is another novel experience, which makes it more difficult to answer the question addressed each year in the "State of Working Pennsylvania": How is the Pennsylvania economy…

Tom Wilson, the chair of the executive committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce published an op-ed titled "Save Capitalism by Paying People More." Wilson acknowledges in blunt terms that ordinary working Americans are not flourishing economically. This year's annual "The State of Working Pennsylvania" documents the accuracy of…

The United States and Pennsylvania economies are at a pivot point: Will we build forward better or will we build back the same? Will we make things even worse? This report revisits the policy choices that lie ahead. Most of this annual checkup on the Pennsylvania economy, the 26th "State of Working Pennsylvania," presents labor market…

Social statistics may exaggerate the degree of hardship caused by labor market problems. Yet, in many ways social statistics underestimate the degree of hardship caused by extended unemployment, underemployment, and low wages. Therefore, new measures are needed to reassess long-term and cyclical labor market developments, the changing status of…

The rising wage inequality in U.S. urban labor markets during the 1980s was examined in a study of 20 metropolitan area labor markets. The study's perspective differs from the prevailing perspective on the problem in three ways: (1) it focuses on changes in the wage structure in a sample of local labor markets; (2) it examines changes in the…