Guy Berger, Ph.D.’s Post

Vibecession check: The premium earned by Americans with advanced degrees relative to having only a BA is unusually low by the standards of the past 24 years.

New skill competency rating scale courtesy of Yustina Saleh, Ph.D.: 1/ "X can do this in their sleep" 2/ "X can't do this in their sleep, but can do this when awake (without coffee)" 3/ "X can only do this when awake, with coffee"

In the 2010s, inequality was a big story - during and after the Great Recession, lower-paid workers experienced much worse outcomes than higher-paid professionals. But the early 2020s have been the opposite. Due to persistent labor shortages, pay growth has been faster at the bottom of the distribution, leading to pay scale compression. I don't think discourse about the economy and economic policy have fully caught up to this change.

Blair Witch Project reboot, except it's just someone at a zoom meeting desperately searching for an empty conference room. Or is this too scary for most audiences?

Two months in a row of good inflation numbers - the kind we need to see for the Fed to lower interest rates (and possibly within the next few months).

Thanks to Neil Dutta at RenMac for having me on his podcast to talk about labor markets. Permit me a bit of nostalgia: Neil's one of my oldest macroeconomist friends. We met for the first time 14-15 years ago, on the Charlotte trading floor of Bank of America - he and I were both BofA employees, me on the buy side and him on the sell side.

For those who will be at #JFFHorizons - two of my colleagues, Debbie Wasden and Suzanne Towns, will be discussing one of the BGI projects I am most excited about: the Education Quality Outcomes Standards (EQOS). Those of us with 4-year degrees take for granted how easily employers translate them into assessments of candidate quality - and hopefully EQOS can do the same for people with non-degree credentials.

The probably undercount of recent immigrants in the Census Bureau population estimates means: 1/ The "true" unemployment rate is probably marginally higher than the currently published unemployment rate. This small gap will probably narrow as Census Bureau population estimates are updated early next year. 2/ Most of this "undermeasured" employment probably takes the form of new labor market entrants, which is one of the more benign forms of unemployment. (In contrast, to say, people who have been permanently laid off.)