Continued Worker Power in the Labor Market

Elite institutions are so excited to tame pandemic era worker power, but the reality is that workers have a lot of power and they are using it, even if it is often individually rather than collectively.

U.S. labor markets are even more constrained than the current 3.5% unemployment rate indicates, according to new economic research that argues declines in the number of hours employees want to work were reinforced by the pandemic and are set to continue.

The research, released on Friday at the Kansas City Federal Reserve’s annual Jackson Hole research symposium in Wyoming and published separately, shifts the focus from how many people are working, to how many hours they are putting in – or want to.

In economically more developed nations, the trend on that front has been falling for decades, according to research presented at the symposium and conducted by Goethe University Frankfurt’s Nicola Fuchs-Schundeln, Vanderbilt University’s Adam Blandin and the St. Louis Fed’s Alexander Bick.

They suggest the advent of more flexible work schedules and work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic will likely strengthen a trend in which the number of people in jobs continues to rise, but the average hours each one works falls.

Also, I wonder what a conference in Jackson Hole costs. Much more than Kansas City. Glad to see that our elites can only talk economics in expensive mountain retreats that the plutocrats don’t even enjoy. I would ask on the other hand who wants to hold a conference in Kansas City, but then that’s the kind of town historians meet in since it is relatively affordable.