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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.

Research Brief
Exploring Ohio's Pipeline of Manufacturing Workers
The resurging U.S. manufacturing industry has a growing need for skilled and diverse workers. An examination of the pipeline between Ohio's postsecondary education system and employment highlights the challenges and opportunities that workers, employers, and educational institutions in the industry face.
Sep 14, 2023
Report
All Work and No Pay: Teachers' Perceptions of Their Pay and Hours Worked
Since the pandemic, there have been some positive improvements in teacher well-being. However, teachers in some states are still leaving their jobs at rates higher than before COVID-19 hit. How might salary and work hours affect their decisions to leave?
Sep 12, 2023

Explore Employment and Unemployment

Commentary
38 Million Have Applied for Unemployment. But How Many Have Received Benefits?
Unemployment Insurance may need substantial reform to its application process, but it has weathered the COVID-19 pandemic unemployment disaster. Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the new program intended for workers who are not part of the employer tax base, has not.
Jun 1, 2020
Blog
COVID-19's Effects on U.S. Schools, Vaccine Uptake, Small Businesses: RAND Weekly Recap
This weekly recap focuses on how COVID-19 has affected U.S. schools, potential barriers to vaccine uptake, what small businesses need to survive, and more.
May 29, 2020
News Release
Preparing Now Can Help Small Businesses Revive More Quickly as the Economy Reopens, Business Owners Tell RAND
As small businesses reopen after a lengthy pandemic shutdown, one key challenge will be finding working capital to replenish inventories and pay employees until revenue returns to normal.
May 27, 2020
Commentary
To Preserve Jobs, America's Employers May Have to Get Creative
With about 38.6 million Americans filing for unemployment insurance benefits since the end of February, it is clear that COVID-19 has turned the world of work upside down. One way to reduce the economic damage may be job-sharing, an approach that focuses on maximizing jobs by reducing workers' hours rather than resorting to layoffs or furloughs.
May 26, 2020
Commentary
How Small Businesses Are Surviving the Pandemic
Small-business owners are facing many challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. What kinds of policies might help them in the immediate term? And what will they need to thrive once the public health crisis has passed?
May 22, 2020
Commentary
Relaxing COVID-19 Restrictions Presents Stark Choices
RAND's new COVID-19 interventions impact tool uses epidemiological and economic models and continually refreshed data to estimate what could happen as restrictions are eased. The tool won't make the choices confronting state leaders less painful. But it can provide clear, evidence-based estimates of the health and economic trade-offs.
May 18, 2020
Blog
Preparing for a Post-Vaccine World, Domestic Abuse, the Future of War: RAND Weekly Recap
This weekly recap focuses on why we need a blueprint for a post-vaccine world, helping domestic abuse victims during COVID-19, the pandemic's historic economic effects, and more.
May 15, 2020
Commentary
Economic Recovery in Egypt Should Include Women
Despite tremendous strides in educational attainment, women's engagement in the labor force in Egypt remains limited. Will Egypt's post-pandemic recovery further exacerbate structural barriers and inequities? Or could the current economic crisis be an opportunity to develop new opportunities to employ women and foster conditions for a more inclusive and diversified labor force?
May 11, 2020
Blog
Reopening America, China's 'Mask Diplomacy,' State Police Powers: RAND Weekly Recap
This weekly recap focuses on a RAND tool that estimates the public health and economic effects of reopening America, China's “mask diplomacy,” using police powers for pandemic response, and more.
May 8, 2020
Commentary
The Historic Economic Effects of COVID-19
The extent of COVID-19's effect on the labor market will be catastrophic for many workers and businesses. Matching the unemployment rate peak set by the Great Depression is not even necessary to establish the historic nature of the downturn that we're living through.
May 7, 2020
Report
The Appalachia Partnership Initiative's Investments in Education, Workforce Development, and Catalyzing the Community: Reflections from 2014 Through 2019
RAND researchers trace the impact of the Appalachia Partnership Initiative investments on science, technology, engineering, and math education for grades K-12 and energy and advanced manufacturing workforce development from 2014 through 2019.
May 6, 2020
News Release
RAND Creates Online Tool to Help State and Local Policymakers Manage Responses to COVID-19 Pandemic
A new tool designed to help state and local officials estimate the effects of social distancing and other public health interventions used to combat the COVID-19 pandemic has been released by the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.
May 4, 2020
Q&A
Reopening America—The Health and Economic Tradeoffs: Q&A with RAND Experts
Local and state officials are thinking through whether, when, and how to lift social-distancing restrictions. We asked three RAND researchers about the complex problem of reopening.
May 4, 2020
Tool
New Tool Can Assess the Effects of COVID-19 Interventions
State and local leaders have taken unprecedented measures to slow the spread of COVID-19 and prevent health care systems from being overwhelmed. As states plan the way to recovery, a new tool can help them estimate both the public health and economic consequences of imposing or lifting restrictions.
May 4, 2020
Report
Estimating the Economic Costs of Social-Distancing Policies
To support state and local officials making policy decisions to prevent the spread of COVID-19, RAND researchers developed a series of economic models aimed at estimating the economic consequences associated with a small set of social-distancing policies.
May 4, 2020
Multimedia
The Health and Economic Tradeoffs of Reopening America
In this Call with the Experts podcast, RAND researchers consider the health and economic effects of relaxing social distancing restrictions.
May 1, 2020
Blog
A Proposed COVID-19 Cure, Economic Decline, North Korea: RAND Weekly Recap
This weekly recap focuses on the unintended consequences of a proposed COVID-19 treatment, another wave of economic destruction, North Korea after Kim Jong Un, and more.
May 1, 2020
Commentary
Protecting Household Employers and Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic
As the federal government extends aid to people put out of work by the COVID-19 pandemic, it could do more to help one group of employers and the vital American workers they employ: hundreds of thousands of nannies, housekeepers, and others employed in private homes.
Apr 23, 2020
Multimedia
Will the Coronavirus Pandemic Cause a Recession?
Kathryn Edwards, associate economist with the RAND Corporation, addresses the concern that the social and health actions being taken to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic may cause a recession.
Apr 22, 2020
Report
Women in Egypt Face Barriers to Employment
Large gains in educational attainment among women in Egypt have not been matched with gains in the workplace. Obstacles preventing them from securing employment include tensions between work and family responsibilities, lack of mobility, wage gaps, and fear of sexual harassment.
Apr 21, 2020

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Research conducted by

Researcher Spotlight

Shawn D. Bushway

Adjunct Policy Researcher

Shawn D. Bushway is an economist and criminologist at RAND, a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, and a professor at the University at Albany (SUNY) where he received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship. He is a fellow of the American Society of…
Sarah Angell

Research Assistant

Sarah Angell (she/her) is a research assistant focusing on home affairs and social policy at RAND Europe. She is currently working on projects in the areas of education, women's financial independence and criminal justice. Her research interests include employment, gender, public benefits and…

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