Category Archives: labor market

Guest Contribution: “Gauging Recessions with the Jobs-Workers Gap – January 2023”

Today, we are fortunate to present a guest contribution written by Paweł Skrzypczyński, economist at the National Bank of Poland. The views expressed herein are those of the author and should not be attributed to the National Bank of Poland.


We present an update of the jobs-workers gap discussed in previous posts: [1], [2], [3].

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How to End an Endless Debate

A long running debate between reader JohnH and just about anybody else on this website involves UK 2015 (1) inflation, and (2) real wages, with JohnH quoting from various documents. I thought it useful to GET THE DATA MYSELF to resolve the question. Below are three graphs, of consumer price level, year-on-year inflation, and the CPI deflated wage.

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Glick, Leduc, Pepper: “Will Workers Demand Cost-of-Living Adjustments?”

That’s the title of a recent SF Fed Economic Letter, by Reuven Glick, Sylvain Leduc, and Mollie Pepper.

Households are currently expecting inflation to run high in the short run but to remain muted over the more distant future. Given this divergence, what role do short-run and long-run household inflation expectations play in determining what workers expect for future wages? Data show that wage inflation is sensitive to movements in household short-run inflation expectations but not to those over longer horizons. This points to an upside risk for inflation, as workers negotiate higher wages that businesses could pass on to consumers by raising prices.

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