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February 24, 2025
It’s all about the skills, not the credentials. You know the labor market times are changing when Harvard MBAs start showing up in the unemployment stories. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, 23 percent of recent Harvard Business School grads were still looking for work three months after graduation. In 2022, that figure was only 10 percent….
February 20, 2025
In my last column, I showed that Americans’ assessments of the economy have tracked the official unemployment rate well over the long run. That is important because it suggests that both public opinion and objective measures indicate that the labor market is historically strong (though accelerating inflation during and after the COVID-19 pandemic has caused these…
February 18, 2025
Young liberal women are especially prone nowadays to reporting poor mental health. This was the discovery that Zach Goldberg made almost five years ago pouring over Pew data in the spring of 2020. Further research in 2022 found that depression had surged among liberal high school girls in the last decade-and-a-half, and much more so for them than other high schoolers,…
February 14, 2025
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted unprecedented policy interventions in the US that provided nearly $3 trillion to support struggling families. This column examines the short-term effects of these interventions on child poverty and finds quite different trends for income poverty and consumption poverty. While disposable income poverty declined dramatically in 2021, consumption poverty fell more gradually,…
February 11, 2025
One of the hottest guessing games in workforce development is figuring out how generative artificial intelligence will affect jobs and how to prepare students and workers for an AI-infused economy. The future of work looks bright, but the full potential of AI to increase productivity and raise wages and incomes will only be realized if…
February 7, 2025
The willingness of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency to take on sacred cows is stunning Washington, as tenets long unquestioned suddenly fall like idols destroyed by Abraham. The same creative destruction should be focused on a bad idea that has harmed cities and fostered dependency for nearly a century: public housing. Instead of tinkering…
February 7, 2025
On January 29, the National Assessment of Education Progress, NAEP, released results from its 2024 assessment. This latest installment of the self-styled “Nation’s Report Card” makes depressing reading. Indeed, if it weren’t for bad news, there would be hardly any news at all. The previous 2022 NAEP results were bad—but they could be blamed on…
February 6, 2025
The first Trump administration did not do a lot to advance the family policy ball. Sure, they doubled the Child Tax Credit to $2,000 in 2017. Otherwise, Trump 1.0 didn’t score many wins on the family field. But there are growing signs the second Trump administration will move much more aggressively to make America more family friendly….
February 4, 2025
Republicans’ agenda of cutting taxes and increasing spending on their policy priorities depends significantly on identifying productive spending reductions. But just cutting spending will not be enough. Republicans must also explain how their tax and spending cuts will result in better outcomes for all Americans. The federal debt has exploded to $36 trillion and annual…
February 3, 2025
Wisconsin state legislators recently introduced a series of bills to help working families across the state. Among these proposals is one that calls for providing free breakfast and lunch for all schoolchildren. At first glance, the initiative seems straightforward and compassionate — after all, who would oppose ensuring children have enough to eat? However, a closer look…