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Employment and Unemployment

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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

Commentary

Is a Recession Coming? A Key Indicator Is Also the King of Mixed Messages

When fears of inflation arise in the United States, people start paying a lot of attention to weekly unemployment-insurance claims, as an early indicator of layoffs that could augur a broader slump. But unemployment claims are a flawed gauge that may be particularly skewed by the pandemic.

May 27, 2022
Journal Article

Pathways to Retirement Among Dual Earning Couples

This paper examines the transition from full-time work to fully retired among dual earning couples, which we call joint retirement trajectories. We analyze 12 waves of the Health and Retirement Study to map out the distribution of potential pathways that couples undertake when retiring.

Apr 21, 2022
Commentary

A Whole New, Same World

Workers in the United States have emerged from the pandemic with new preferences and demands, but they still lack the power to get what they want. By any meaningful measure, employers are still in charge.

Apr 20, 2022
Commentary

For Ukrainian Refugees in Poland, Livelihood Needs Will Follow Humanitarian Ones

Host countries such as Poland that accept refugees are to be lauded for their humanitarian response. To increase the likelihood that these countries find effective policy solutions, they should view the influx of refugees not merely as a challenge, but as a significant opportunity to be seized for aiding their post-COVID recovery.

Mar 18, 2022
Journal Article

Barred from Employment: More Than Half of Unemployed Men in Their 30s Had a Criminal History of Arrest

We investigate what portion of the pool of unemployed men in the United States have been arrested, convicted, or incarcerated by age 35.

Mar 9, 2022
News Release

More Than Half of Unemployed Young Men Have Criminal Records; New Approach Needed to Aid the Unemployed

More than half of unemployed American men in their 30s have a history of being arrested or convicted of a crime, a stigma that poses a barrier to them participating in the nation's labor force.

Feb 18, 2022
Journal Article

Building a Better Understanding of the Impact of Early Childhood Education and Care

This European Platform for Investing in Children research note examines the medium- and long-term impact of early childhood education and care provision on education and labour market outcomes for children and parents, as well as the indicators employed for these measurements.

Jan 27, 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 were possible to show that some people pose a low risk of recidivism?

Jan 6, 2022
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
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

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