Two competing narratives frame the debate about why unemployment remains so high even though the economy has been growing for more than two years.

The mainstream "Great Recession" narrative holds that the economy fell into a deep hole in 2008 and has been climbing...

House Republicans must think the job market is improving rapidly and that the Congressional Budget Office is way off base in projecting that the unemployment rate will average 8.7 percent in 2011 and 2012.  How else can one explain their proposal to slash federal emergency unemployment insurance (UI) benefits?

The...

Our series of posts this week describing trends in income inequality has prompted a natural question:  what has caused the sharp rise in inequality over the past three decades or so?

The causes are complex and not fully understood, but via Mark Thoma, a good place to start...

To provide some historical context to the current public discussion of income inequality, we're releasing a series of posts this week that examine trends in income inequality in recent decades and outline different data sources to examine the issue.

The broad facts of income inequality over the past six...

"Most striking is the sense of political paralysis in both chambers and an almost visceral hunkering down in the face of the tough choices ahead," Politico's David Rogers wrote this morning regarding the Senate's failure thus far to approve pending jobs legislation.

There's nothing funny about any of this,...

As Congress dithers over the latest jobs bill, unemployed workers throughout the country face another week of uncertainty about their unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. A needed extension of the temporary UI benefits and subsidized COBRA health insurance in last year's Recovery Act is being "held hostage"...

Today's jobs report shows a labor market that has turned the corner and is creating jobs but one with a long way to go toward a full recovery from the devastating job losses of 2008-09. Below are some charts to show how the new figures look in historical context;...

As David Leonhardt explains in today's New York Times, Congress shouldn't let the need for long-term deficit reduction prevent it from passing a jobs bill to address today's historically high unemployment rates. Or as I put it last week, the current deficit to worry about is...