IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pri/indrel/416.html

The High-pressure U.S. Labor Market of the 1990s

Author

Listed:
  • Lawrence F. Katz

    (Harvard University and NBER)

  • Alan B. Krueger

    (Princeton University and NBER)

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of selected labor market changes on the decline in the unemployment rate in the 1990s. The first section provides an overview of aggregate unemployment trends, inflation, and price and wage Phillips curves. The second section examines the effect of demographic changes on the unemployment rate. The third section examines the impact of the 150 percent increase in the number of men in jail or prison since 1985 on the unemployment rate. The fourth section examines the impact of evolving labor market intermediaries (namely worker profiling by the Unemployment Insurance system and the growth of the temporary help industry) on the unemployment rate. The fifth section explores whether worker bargaining power has become weaker, allowing for low unemployment and only modest wage pressure, because of worker job anxiety, the decline in union membership, or increased competitive pressures. The final section examines the impact of the tightest labor market in a generation on poverty. Our main findings are that changes in the age structure of the labor force, the growth of the male prison population, and, more speculatively, the rise of the temporary help sector, are the main labor market forces behind the low unemployment rate in the late 1990s.

Suggested Citation

  • Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 1999. "The High-pressure U.S. Labor Market of the 1990s," Working Papers 795, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    • Handle: RePEc:pri:indrel:416
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dataspace.princeton.edu/bitstream/88435/dsp01dr26xx37d/1/416.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • N7 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pri:indrel:416. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bobray Bordelon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/irprius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.