unemployment - The New School SCEPA

Working Paper—Time spent unemployed can have a profound impact on the quality of a worker's life, future, and family. SCEPA's latest working paper focuses on gender and racial disparities in the time it takes to find work and how these periods are impacted by unemployment insurance.

Research Note— New research shows that even before the COVID-19 recession, 55.3 percent of workers age 55 and up in the bottom half of the income distribution were forced to leave the workforce and 32.4 percent in the next 40% of the income distribution – the middle class – were forced out of work in old age.

Working Paper—The popular EITC program is credited with encouraging employment and reducing poverty. But a SCEPA working paper suggests it may also reduce wages for low-education workers, including older workers who do not receive EITC benefits at the same rate as younger workers.

Brief— Working longer is often proposed as the solution to the retirement crisis caused by older workers’ lack of retirement assets, but new research from SCEPA's ReLab shows this assumption doesn't match older workers' real experiences in the labor market.

Brief— SCEPA's latest research finds that the COVID-19 recession worsens the inequality of job safety among older workers. 

Our ongoing video series, SCEPA Responds, brings together expert economists, professors, fellows, and research associates to discuss current economic issues and challenge economic doctrines that create systemic inequity. The series focuses on areas such as race, monetary and fiscal policy, and economic growth and crisis, to provide insights for working families, older workers, the working poor, minorities, and more.

On Thursday, May 28th SCEPA's Retirement Equity Lab (ReLab) and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) partnered together for a webinar on the harsh economic effects COVID-19 is having on some of our most vulnerable: older workers.

Last updated July 20, 2020.

A compendium of economic thoughts and policy recommendations in response to the coronavirus. 

December 2018 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

November 2018 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

December 2015 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

September 2018 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

July 2018 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

May 2018 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

March 2018 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

February 2018 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

December 2017 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

This is the first report of the SCEPA Labor Market Indicators (LMI) project.

This report analyzes the results of new indicators from our previous indicator report, for the early 2000s.

The relationship between productivity growth and unemployment has been debated since the birth of classical economics.

Unemployment and employment rates are the conventional indicators used to measure economic and labor market performance.

National labor market performance is conventionally judged on the basis of unemployment and employment rates.

Generous unemployment benefits lie at the heart of the conventional explanation for persistent high unemployment.

The central claim of this paper is that a still richer account requires embedding the Keynesian account in a comparative political economy framework.

This paper calls into question standard measures of unemployment.

This paper reviews the evidence put forward in support of the orthodox prediction, which has relied on extrapolating from pre-Great Recession conditions.

Brief — April 2015 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

Brief — June 2015 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

Brief — July 2015 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

Brief — August 2015 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

Brief — October 2015 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

Brief — September 2016 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55 Tweet: More than 1 in 10 older workers who want a job are unemployed or underemployed #JobsReport pic.twitter.com/vpHKbPArxf bit.ly/2e8gBkC</a> width=

December 2014 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

November 2014 Unemployment Report for Workers over 55