So I am quoted in this story from the Grand Forks Herald about tax policy changes and employment changes in the state of North Dakota(Link). I thought I would extend my thoughts here. Of all the policies to attempt to heap credit upon for employment gains in the state the tax changes seem to me the least likely. What is more likely?
Continue reading Employment Gains in ND
In this post I branch out from the recent wage discussions to broaden the discussion of Grand Forks, ND by looking at employment comparisons.
Working on a paper for presentation at a conference this summer and chair work took much of this week away from my blogging. Oh and a revise and resubmit. That is not helping either. I keep getting excited by the paper though. It is a continuation of a master’s thesis I supervised and the former student, now co-author, really likes the topic too. We are looking at fertility and the impact of various employment classifications for women and their partners. We have around 2.2 million observations so if a variable is not significant we know it is NOT significant.
I was in Washington this week and had a chance to read a bunch of material regarding the tariff plan. The notion of expanding employment in the U.S. with these tariffs is really silly. It is clearly the case the primary metal production employment has been on the decline as seen here.
There are many ways to slice and dice employment and the change in employment in a community. How webs to do it, and whether the approach generates meaningful outcomes, is not always clear. We can look at particular sectors and attribute outsize importance to them and fear job loss is symptomatic of a declining employment base. It could also be the case the local labor market composition changed and the losses in one sector were the gain in another.