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Labor Markets
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- PerspectivaWorkforce & Skills
The institutions that match workers to work appear in no series that measures the match
Job openings averaged 11.2 million a month in 2022 and 7.1 million a month in 2025, and the quits rate ended the window at 2 percent of employment, under its 2020 reading. Prime-age participation finished at 83.6 percent, its highest, so whatever is weakening is not weakening everywhere the statistics look.
- ExplicativoWorkforce & Skills
What a state unemployment rate leaves out
The rate is a fraction whose denominator moves. By the end you will know why it can fall while a state's workforce shrinks, and why it counts residents when payroll figures count jobs.
- PerspectivaMacroeconomics & Markets
Two participation rates moved apart, and that gap is where ageing would enter the arithmetic
Headline participation gained 0.7 points between 2020 and 2025 while participation inside the 25-54 band gained 2.2, and the two rates divide by different populations. That gap is the shape an ageing population would take in a labour statistic, but none of these series counts anybody's age, so the shape is all it is.
- ComentarioMigration & Demography
The labour-force series do not record who arrived, and participation is not a substitute
No file on this site records a worker's place of birth, so nothing here can attribute a share of recent capacity to migration. The rate usually offered as a stand-in fell 0.2 points between 2023 and 2025 while prime-age participation rose 0.3 points to its six-year high of 83.6 percent, a divergence the two different populations can produce with nobody arriving at all.
- PerspectivaIndustrial Policy
In fifty of fifty-one jurisdictions the largest occupational group pays below the median
The biggest block of jobs in almost every American state is a below-median one, and in 47 of 51 it is the same group. Industrial work sits in the middle of that ladder, which is a better case for it than its advocates usually make and a smaller one than they claim.
- PerspectivaWorkforce & Skills
The labour force fell in 39 of 51 jurisdictions in a single month
Between June and July 2026 the civilian labour force fell in 39 states and the District of Columbia's column, and rose in twelve. The movements are tiny, they point the same way, and the file that records them cannot tell you whether that means anything.
- ComentarioWorkforce & Skills
Jobs are counted where they are done, not where workers live
In July 2026 the District of Columbia held 179.7 jobs for every 100 people in its own labour force, and Maryland held 87.9. The two numbers are measuring different things, and state rankings that put them side by side quietly mislead.
- ComentarioIndustrial Policy
The industrial policy number nobody sets a target for
Output per hour in the nonfarm business sector stands 18 percent above its 2017 base. No industrial programme claims that gain, none is measured against it, and it is the only number that decides whether domestic production survives domestic wages.
- HallazgoWorkforce & Skills
Prime-age participation rose four years running, then held at 83.6 percent
The share of the 25 to 54 population in the labour force went from 81.4 percent in 2020 to 83.6 in 2024, a gain of 2.2 points, and 2025 came in at 83.6 again. The headline rate, which covers the civilian population rather than one age band, gained 0.7 points over the same six readings and fell in the final year.
- HallazgoWorkforce & Skills
The quits rate has fallen below where it stood in 2020, while job openings have not
The rate rose from 2.1 percent of employment in 2020 to 2.8 in 2022, then fell in each of the next three years to 2 percent, below where it began. Job openings peaked in the same year and remain above their own 2020 level, so the two halves of the picture no longer agree.
- HallazgoWorkforce & Skills
Broad underemployment has risen in each of the last two years, to its highest reading since 2021
The U-6 rate fell from 13.7 percent of the labour force in 2020 to 6.9 in 2022, held at 6.9 in 2023, and has since risen to 7.5 and then 8. The 1.1 points it has added from that floor exceed the 0.7 the headline unemployment rate has added from its own, but as a multiple of the headline rate the broad measure has narrowed since 2023.
- ExplicativoInfrastructure
What a completion guarantee covers and when it falls away
Between financial close and the day a plant works, a project has debt and no revenue. A completion guarantee is the sponsor's promise to stand in that gap. By the end you will know what triggers its release, what it absorbs while it lasts, and why the release date is negotiated harder than the amount.
- ExplicativoWorkforce & Skills
Personal income per head and the median wage measure different things
One is a mean taken over everybody, the other a middle taken over jobholders. By the end you will know why a state can look rich on one and ordinary on the other, and which question each figure answers.
- ExplicativoWorkforce & Skills
What a labour shortage claim needs before anyone can test it
A shortage is a claim that a market is not clearing at a stated price. By the end you will know the five things such a claim has to name, and why the same job carries different prices in different states.
- HallazgoMacroeconomics & Markets
Four fifths of the rise in new business applications since 2020 came in a single year
The weekly average went from 84 thousand applications in 2020 to 104 thousand in 2021, and the four years since have added five. The 2025 reading of 109 thousand is the highest of the six, and also the third rise in a series that has fallen in the year between each one.
- PerspectivaRegional Development
The occupation that concentrates pays above its local median in every jurisdiction, and the occupation that spreads pays above it in ten
Computer and mathematical work pays more than the middle job in all fifty-one jurisdictions; production work does so in ten, six of which hold the country's lowest median wages. Production is also the more evenly spread of the two, at or above the national share in 27 jurisdictions against 13.
- HallazgoWorkforce & Skills
The largest fall in job openings came in the year unemployment was lowest
Openings peaked at 11.2 million on the monthly average in 2022 and have fallen in each of the three years since, by 1.9 million, then 1.6 million, then 0.6 million. The largest of those falls landed in 2023, when the unemployment rate read 3.6 percent, the lowest of its six readings, and the smallest landed in 2025, when the rate read 4.3 percent.
- ExplicativoWorkforce & Skills
Where an occupational wage estimate comes from
An occupational wage figure is a median, drawn from a survey of employers, for jobs located in one place. By the end you will know what the number leaves out, why the top of the scale is censored, and when two figures for the same occupation are not in conflict.
- ExplicativoIndustrial Policy
Manufacturing employment and manufacturing output measure different things
A country can make more while employing fewer people, and the federal series that track it will say so. This explains what each one counts and when each one is the right measure to cite.
- HallazgoMacroeconomics & Markets
Average hourly earnings rose in every year of the window, and the price level rose by slightly more
Private-sector pay went from 29.36 dollars an hour in 2020 to 36.44 in 2025, a gain of 7.08 dollars with no down year. Restated at 2020 prices using the consumer price index, the 2025 figure is 29.30 dollars, about six cents below where the series started.