🚨🚨Do Americans accurately perceive union benefits? 🚨🚨

Our new paper (led by Jonne Kamphorst) out this week PNASNews finds:

Americans significantly and systematically underestimate material benefits associated with union benefits. 🧵👇

University administrators' choices will have consequences.

🚨 New Working Paper! 🚨

Do labor market conditions affect the hiring discrimination of union supporters?

Short answer: Yes they do. I find that discrimination is pro-cyclical and mainly observable among firms without a collective agreement.

The paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

The 'unexpected' bump up in 2024q1 was partly driven by union contracts. Contract negotiation dates are staggered, and union workers are catching up in real wage growth.

I know this from personal experience: our union was one of those, and we got a sizable 2024q1 catch-up bump.

Here's each G7 country's cumulative increase in real GDP per capita, since just before the pandemic:

🇺🇸 +7.6%
🇮🇹 +4.9% (thru Q4)
🇯🇵 +2.0% (thru Q4)
🇫🇷 +0.0% (thru Q4)
🇩🇪 -1.4% (thru Q4)
🇬🇧 -1.7% (thru Q4)
🇨🇦 -2.8% (thru Q4)

Gen Z is still young, but they typically have higher inflation-adjusted net wealth (assets minus debt, including student debt) than prior generations did at their age.

Millennials, who were behind for a time due to the timing of the Great Recession, are now ahead of Boomers. /1

We should celebrate the ECI reading as reflecting real wage catchup, a very good thing. That's it. Period.

NEW PIECE: I'm in FT Alphaville today assessing whether the FTC's new Non-Compete ban will run up against the Fed's desire for wage growth to fall &, more generally, whether pro-worker non-financial regulation will be seen as a price stability threat
ft.com/content/6afe46…

Complete insanity.

'Government contracting and living wages > minimum wages' - New paper from Stephen Machin & myself now out as a Centre for Economic Performance DP.
The paper studies a prevalent ESG clause in government procurement contracts: Living Wages set considerably higher above the mandate minimum. (1/n)

When Hawaii banned noncompetes for tech workers in 2015, new hire wages rose 4%.

jhr.uwpress.org/content/57/S/S…

Arin Dube The two Nobel Laureates are gushing about you here (move to the 42 minutes mark)
youtu.be/g3WfzXUce2E

So the FTC's ban of non-competes doesn't apply to non-profits due to what the FTC has jurisdiction over. (Simplifying, but basically.)

Makes it a good time to remember that non-profits can be highly exploitative workplaces.

Best illustrated with humor. tiktok.com/@nicoleolived/…

thats a sophisticated argument & much of this cycle has propped 'anything that boosts pay/labor leverage is somewhat inflationary so actually net-bad for people' simplistic framing

like if u3 were 6% as many called for ya it'd be disinflationary! was it optimal vs other paths

Why does the U.S. Chamber of Commerce hate dynamism in the American economy, where workers are free to move to the best opportunities, and companies are free to recruit the best talent?

Another big reason why an agency ruling isn’t sufficient to settle the noncompetes issue: jurisdictional limitations.

For example, if you’re one of the 13+ million Americans working in the nonprofit sector, the FTC rule doesn’t apply to you.