Skip to page content

Employment and Unemployment

Featured

An individual's education, age, and health status may present barriers or opportunities to employability, just as a region's economy, tax base, and number of immigrants and emigrants may affect job availability. RAND research examines the impact of a range of policies and forces—personal, regional, and global—on employment and unemployment.

Commentary

The Great Resignation: American Workers Suffering a Crisis of Meaning

Oct 26, 2021

Americans are quitting their jobs in record numbers, creating significant shortages of workers for businesses. To understand and address this issue, policymakers might need to pay attention to noneconomic factors in addition to economic ones.
Commentary

Married Moms Aren't Striking Workers, but They Are Saying the Same Thing

Nov 1, 2021

If we are in the middle of a labor shortage, recruiting people back into the labor force is key to sustaining a recovery. The historic work choices of married mothers reveal a lot about what might lure people back into the workforce.

Explore Employment and Unemployment

Report

Providing Another Chance: Resetting Recidivism Risk in Criminal Background Checks

The authors propose the reset principle that anchors assessments of recidivism risk at the time of a background check rather than the time of conviction, as current methods derived from the criminal justice context do.

Jan 6, 2022
Research Brief

A More Accurate Way to Predict Recidivism Risk in Background Checks

Roughly 30 percent of people in the United States have criminal histories, so exclusions resulting from background checks can foreclose job and other opportunities for many. But what if it was possible to show that some people pose a low risk of recidivism?

Jan 6, 2022
Report

Proceedings of the U.S.-Japan Socioeconomic Policy Research Exchange: The Rise of Telework Under COVID-19 and the Growth of Cryptocurrency

This volume captures insights from two conferences that brought together leading U.S. and Japanese experts to explore the implications of recent growth in teleworking, working from home, cryptocurrency, and blockchain in the United States and Japan.

Jan 5, 2022
Blog

RAND Commentary Highlights of 2021

Vaccine rollouts, an attack on the U.S. Capitol, massive ransomware attacks, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, record numbers of job openings and people quitting, and more. RAND researchers weighed in on all these topics and more.

Dec 21, 2021
Journal Article

CPS Nonresponse During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Explanations, Extent, and Effects

This paper examines survey nonresponse in the CPS at the start of the pandemic and estimates to what extent nonresponse led to an underestimate of the unemployment rate.

Dec 21, 2021
Blog

Gender Pay Gap Among Doctors, America's Labor Shortage, 'Hacking Equity': RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap focuses on the pay gap between female and male doctors, understanding America’s weird job market, social and emotional learning, and more.

Dec 17, 2021
Commentary

How to Explain This Weird Job Market

It's tempting to see in 2021 a harbinger of some permanent shift in our labor market, but that would be premature. What is clear is that we will never recreate the world of December 2019. The labor market in 2022 and beyond will reflect not only what workers learned from their pandemic experience, but also how employers and policymakers choose to respond.

Dec 14, 2021
Infographic

Understanding the work and health research landscape

This infographic accompanies a report which sets out the findings of a study funded by the Department of Health and Social Care to map the landscape of funding for research in work and health in the UK since 2015.

Oct 29, 2021
Report

Work and health research funding review (2015—2020)

This report sets out the findings of a study funded by the Department of Health and Social Care to map the landscape of funding for research in work and health in the UK since 2015.

Oct 29, 2021
Commentary

Is the Fight for $15 Going to Cost Low-Wage Workers Their Health Insurance?

Minimum wage increases can lead to reductions in employer-sponsored health insurance for some workers and their dependents. If policymakers want to raise the minimum wage, they should look beyond standard labor market outcomes and take into account other potential effects.

Oct 11, 2021
Project

A 21st-Century Workforce Development System

Design studio Morcos Key created an animated illustration that envisions how America's workforce development system could be transformed to better support 21st-century workers, employers, and educators.

Sep 22, 2021
Blog

Prescription Drug Prices, Unemployment Insurance, Anti-Asian Racism: RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap focuses on lowering prescription drug prices, reforming unemployment insurance, addressing anti-Asian racism, and more.

Sep 17, 2021
Commentary

Will Unemployment Insurance Be Reformed? Ask Businesses, Not Workers

The expiration of pandemic benefits points to the flaw at the heart of unemployment insurance: The constituency that pays for benefits isn't the constituency who receives them. Lasting reform to the unemployment insurance system will mean finding a way to benefit employers directly.

Sep 15, 2021
Blog

Just How Many Lives the Vaccines Have Saved, Afghanistan, Unemployment: RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap focuses on the number of lives saved during the early U.S. vaccination effort, what leaving Afghanistan says about other U.S. commitments, global competition for virtual-reality dominance, and more.

Aug 27, 2021
Commentary

Job Openings Are at a Record High. Why Aren't People Going Back to Work?

The U.S. labor market had 10.1 million job openings at the end of June, but 8.7 million workers were still unemployed in July. If there are so many more openings than job seekers, why are there unemployed workers left?

Aug 25, 2021
Research Brief

Helping Los Angelenos Involved in the Criminal Justice System Get and Keep Jobs

Project imPACT is a City of Los Angeles program that helps individuals find employment after they are released from prison. Participants may also receive behavioral health and legal services. An evaluation of the program offers important lessons about its successes and challenges.

Aug 16, 2021
Report

Project imPACT Cohort 1 Final Local Evaluation Report

The authors summarize findings from a process and outcome evaluation of Cohort 1 of Project imPACT, an employment program for individuals who have been involved in the criminal justice system, which provided services from July 2018 to December 2020.

Aug 16, 2021
Commentary

Reframing Retirement

Retirement is a fluid concept. Many retirees would consider returning to the workforce if conditions were right and they could set their own pace. A reframing of the aging and retirement process would allow us to see the issue in a new way.

Aug 9, 2021

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Next

Research conducted by