It remains shocking to me that we have seen a full scale reversal of the post-COVID trend in wage growth. Since March 2025, real wages are down across the distribution. Only the 25th is up (+1%). let’s look at how odd this is in the context of the last 40+ years. @innovateeconomy.bsky.social

It is wild to lump the CTC (and expanding it to the lowest-income families/children) into the same bin as UBI. Just sloppy. Only citing the mixed results on UBI while completely skipping the work on the CTC expansion's impacts.

Opinion | The Road to a Universal Basic Income

An expanded child tax credit is the first step. The bidding is underway.

wsj.com

US wage earners at 35, in 2025 dollars: Boomer $46,023 → Millennial $60,630. Obviously the workforce has changed and expectations around quality of life changed with it. A median, 40 years apart, is not in fact the same mix of people. What about men and women by education?

Academics/researchers/anyone really. If you haven't updated your personal site in a while it just keeps getting easier. A few minutes for integrated GitHub, refresh publications/citations automatically, and animated scroll wheel. bnglasner.github.io

July payrolls fell 23,000, so it might be a good time to reevaluate the hiring pickup narrative. The three-month average is now just 20,000, against a pre-pandemic normal near 177,000.

Well, if we are rehashing the election, friendly reminder that the biggest declines in vote shares for Harris took place in the most expensive and most populous counties. The drop was a huge break from the trend line.

Are your single friends making us "poorer"? Obviously not, but the way we count household income means more one-person households *can* look poorer than a world with more married couples even if no single person earns a dollar less.

The CPI-U is up 0.5 percent (seasonally adjusted) after rising 0.6 percent last month. Year-over-year the all items index increased 4.2 percent before seasonal adjustment. Not a good look compared to wages (AHE)

California's jobs grew 3.4 percent. Take out healthcare and social assistance, and the rest of the state economy actually declined by 0.3 percent. One in six California jobs is in healthcare. The question is what holds up the job market in California when the money pulls back.

Trump's new EO is a real step toward fixing the U.S. retirement system. We spend hundreds of billions a year in tax breaks to fund retirement savings and the top 20% of households capture more than 60%. 54 million private-sector workers, nearly half, have no plan at work.

Promoting Retirement-Savings Access for American Workers by Establishing TrumpIRA.gov

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to ensure that every American worker has

whitehouse.gov

Seeing people who dismissed real wage gains in government data now eager to cite the same data showing declines. Tight labor markets drove gains, but that got waved off to preserve a stagnation story. Keep it simple: when wages rise, that’s good; when they fall, that’s bad.

Where you work shouldn't bar you from being able to invest in your own retirement. We need to expand retirement access so that everyone can save for the future. #Retirement #CSPAN #RetirementSavings

Same image. Same quality. Totally different value. AI’s not likely to replace the human touch.
#AI #Economics #technology #ArtFraud

Automation perfected recording and replaying music, but people still pay for the humans anyway. #AI #FutureOfWork #Economics #Jobs

Check out my upcoming appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal to discuss Pres. Trump's proposal to create private-sector retirement accounts.

High-skilled immigration reform is overdue.

Ignore inputs at your own risk!

We train talent, then lose it. That is a (bad) policy choice.

Five years from now token limit windows will have absolutely destroyed white collar commuting patterns. Hell, even weekend work schedules are going to be impacted. Reflections from a long weekend of playing with Codex and Claude code

Today we launched our OZ housing and affordability initiative. Remember, we CAN build and we NEED to build. Let’s take the steps to make it happen.

Economic Innovation Group@innovateeconomy.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Today, we’re launching a new housing policy initiative focused on catalyzing abundant supply where it’s needed most. First up: Right to Build Zones, a bold federal framework to help municipalities unlock housing while preserving local control. Learn more: eig.org/building-the...

More than 53 million U.S. workers don’t have access to an employer-provided retirement plan. That fact puts today’s “$955 saved” headlines in context — the retirement crisis is fundamentally about access.

CBS News@cbsnews.com · 8mo ago

The average American worker has less than $1,000 saved for retirement, underscoring the financial strain millions could face in old age, according to a new report from the National Institute on Retirement Security.

Workers want us to tackle affordability - lowering costs and making home ownership achievable. What didn’t they want? Raising tariffs. www.instagram.com/reel/DUYZeRq...

Yale making tuition free for families under $200k has sparked the inevitable take: “$200k is the poverty line now.” In 2024, only 16% of U.S. households earned $200,000 or more. Calling the other 84% “in poverty” is nonsense.

People warn about desensitization to state violence. What they miss is that desensitization cuts both ways. The more threats are used, the less they work on protesters who stood their ground and keep recording.

Big city kid counts stopped falling in 2024, but the comeback is not here yet. 🧒 #Cities #Demographics #Housing

How prosperous it is where you live shows up in your life expectancy, and the gaps are huge.

Economic Innovation Group on Instagram: "Place shows up in life expectancy, and the gaps are huge. 🧭 #Inequality #Health #Policy #Economy"

1 likes, 0 comments - innovate_economy on January 22, 2026: "Place shows up in life expectancy, and the gaps are huge. 🧭 #Inequality #Health #Policy #Economy".

instagram.com

Excited to share I’ve been promoted from Economist to Senior Economist at @innovateeconomy.bsky.social!Grateful for the chance to work on research that connects real-world policy to the data—and for a team focused on building a more dynamic, inclusive economy. More work ahead. Let’s go.

Black unemployment has risen rapidly since “Liberation Day,” up 31.7%, from 6.3% to 8.3% as of November. Compared to usual flows/changes, we are well outside the norm and in some concerning company... Source: fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS14...

Involuntary part-time work is surging. From September to November 2025, the share of employed workers working part-time for economic reasons rose about 20%. In the raw data, that is 2.741% to 3.352% of employment, and 4.579M to 5.488M workers. Full analysis here: t.co/kAcnPMQp0O

Given how often we talk about manufacturing, and how important it is, we really should have a clearer idea about how many people are actually working in manufacturing. Spoiler: depending on who/how you ask, the answer differs by million of jobs.