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Economy & Work

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Economy & Work

Publications

  • short reads

    The disappearing male worker

    Are men losing interest in work? Male labor force participation rates in the United States have been in steady decline since at least 1950 while women’s labor market participation steadily rose before leveling off about a decade ago. Two recent analyses of U.S. Census data document this trend and offer some unexpected reasons why this […]

  • short reads

    Black incomes are up, but wealth isn’t

    Although household-income growth for African-Americans has outpaced that of whites since the 1960s, those gains haven’t led to any narrowing of the wealth gap between the races.

  • short reads

    King’s “I have a dream” speech, by the numbers

    Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech 50 years ago today on Washington D.C.’s National Mall and Memorial Parks has become one of the most famous, and quoted, pieces of oratory in U.S. history (though that wasn’t apparent to everyone at the time). But how well have the aspirations King so memorably expressed been realized? We ran […]

  • short reads

    Are blacks as financially well off as whites? Depends on whom you ask

    Despite large and persistent gaps between blacks and whites on virtually every indicator of economic well-being, about half of all whites say the average black person is about as well off financially or doing better than the average white person, according to a survey released last week by the Pew Research Center.

  • report

    King’s Dream Remains an Elusive Goal; Many Americans See Racial Disparities

    Five decades after Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C., a new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that fewer than half (45%) of all Americans say the country has made substantial progress toward racial equality and about the same share (49%) say that “a lot more” remains to be done.

  • short reads

    Black unemployment rate is consistently twice that of whites

    Much has changed for African-Americans since the 1963 March on Washington (which, recall, was a march for “Jobs and Freedom”), but one thing hasn’t: The unemployment rate among blacks is still about double that among whites, as it has been for most of the past six decades.

  • short reads

    Mothers and work: What’s ’ideal’?

    For most American mothers, part-time work would be their ideal work situation, preferred over full-time work or not working at all outside the home.