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These are the best new articles, videos, podcasts, and other resources we have found to teach labor and unemployment. They bring economics to life by showing students real-life examples and current events.
 

News Articles

(Listed from most recent to oldest)

Chinese finance professionals switch careers as industry crackdown dims prospects | Reuters (Oct. 16, 2024)
Markets use higher wages to attract workers to not-so-fun jobs, compensating workers for their opportunity cost. As wages in banking and finance in China go down, finance professionals are increasingly switching to other careers or markets-even stand up comedy.

US port strike ends, leaving cargo backlog | Reuters (Oct. 4, 2024)
The Longshoremen’s Strike cost an estimated $5 billion/day, and backed up ports along the east coast. While the two sides tentatively agreed on a 62% pay increase, no agreement has been reached about automation, which the union adamantly opposes.

More men in their prime working years are neither working nor looking for jobs — here's why |  CNBC (Sept. 21, 2024)
More men in their prime working years are leaving the labor force, with 10.5% neither working nor looking for jobs, a significant rise since 1954. Be sure to check out the video for more details, including why non-college educated men in factory towns are most impacted.

This industry is defying America’s slowing job market | CNN Business (Aug. 10, 2024)
Demand for healthcare workers is booming compared to other private sector industries, with salary growth edging higher to attract more workers.

Ikea lost $5,000 each time when a worker quit, so it began paying more | Business Standard (June 11, 2024)
Ikea is raising wages, implementing improved policies to switch shifts, and attempting to detect when workers are likely to quit.

The 'good' and 'bad' news inside the US jobs report | Reuters (June 10, 2024)
This article has lots of great graphs that break down labor and unemployment trends by industry, gender, and even by looks at unemployment trends by presidential term since Truman.

California Fast Food Workers Hit With Layoffs Ahead of Law Raising Minimum Wage to $20 an Hour | Inc.com (Mar 26, 2024)
When the price increases, quantity demanded decreases.

More than half of recent four-year college grads underemployed | Inside Higher Ed (Feb. 22, 2024)
52% of college graduates take a job that doesn’t require a college degree. And 45% of those graduates are still unemployed a decade later.

Innovation-Killing Noncompete Agreements Are Finally Dying | WIRED (Dec. 4, 2023)
Noncompete agreements can encourage investment in workers, but they’ve also been correlated with lower wages, as employees have fewer competing opportunities. But more states and the FTC are considering banning NCAs with a handful of exceptions.

AI Helps Unskilled Employees on the Job, Hurts Experienced Workers | Business Insider (Dec. 4, 2023)
The rise of AI is disparately impacting the marginal productivity of white-collar workers, boosting the performance of the lowest performers the most. Will wages follow the same trajectory?

Why it pays a lot less to switch jobs right now: 'That new-hire glow is fading' CNBC | (Nov. 17, 2023)
Job hopping isn’t as attractive as it used to be. With companies less desperate for new workers, the large pay increases job hoppers saw in 2021-2022 are gone.

Worker Strikes Hit 23-Year High in August | Investopedia (Sept. 18, 2023)
The BLS tracked 4.1 million “days of idleness” from strikes in August.

Kenya's tea pickers are destroying the machines replacing them | Semafor (June 13, 2023)
A modern-day Luddite rebellion for workers who face few other options.

Survey Response Rates are Down Since Covid. That’s Worrying for US Economic Data. | Bloomberg (Feb. 15, 2023)
U.S. employment data relies on survey responses–but those surveys are getting fewer and fewer respondents, spurring worries about nonresponse bias. And methods to increase the response rates, by offering incentives or more follow-up, can be costly.

There’s a shortage of vets to treat farm animals. Pandemic pets are partly to blame | NPR (December 19, 2022)
There has been a shortage of rural veterinarians for decades. However, there has been an increase in the supply of vets who take care of family pets as veterinarians choose the better pay and work hours. How might these changes affect the food supply chain? This article is long, but you can ask students to read only up to the discussion about burnout.

The economics behind ‘quiet-quitting’ – and what we should call it instead | NPR (September 13, 2022)
Are you striving for perfection at work? This article provides a great analysis of “quiet quitting,” or doing the minimum at your job. It is long but can be used in discussions about productivity, the marginal product of labor, the principal-agent problem, incentives, and opportunity cost.

The Great Resignation, more like the Great Renegotiation | Planet Money (January 25, 2022)
Planet Money discusses how the current tight labor market is benefiting workers.

Graphics

The Unemployment Rate | FRED
FRED is the go-to place to find and track macroeconomic indicators.

Visualized: The State of the U.S. Labor Market | Visual Capitalist
Compare employment changes by industry with this visually appealing bar chart.

Two sets of interactive maps show unemployment data across the US.

Unemployment Rates By City August 2024 | Forbes Advisor

Unemployment Rates By State: August 2024 | Forbes Advisor
 

Videos

Is Unemployment Undercounted? | MRU
Does including discouraged workers in unemployment figures make a difference? Yes. But the official numbers are still a reliable measure of the labor market.

Labor Force Participation | MRU
Find out how changes in demographics and technological innovation have shaped the size and composition of our workforce.

Did You Drive for Uber? | MRU
Josh Angrist has worn many hats: MIT professor, Metrics Master, Nobel Laureate, Uber Driver… You read that right – Josh used to drive for Uber! We asked him why.

The Missing Men | MRU
The supply of men in the workforce is rapidly declining, and some researchers claim that one factor is that the opportunity cost of working a low-wage job has increased. Have students model a shift in the labor supply curve as a result. The original research paper is here.

The Tradeoff Between Fun and Wages | MRU
Lifeguarding vs sewage inspecting? Can you say compensating wage differential? Alex Tabarrok breaks down this concept with the easy-to-understand tradeoff between fun and wages. And here’s a great article from The Atlantic identifying another example of compensating wage differentials.

Econ Duel: Will Machines Take Our Jobs? | MRU
Tyler and Alex face off to argue about the topic du jour -- the effects of automation. Guess who thinks the robots are coming for our jobs? Pairs well with the St. Louis Fed’s Page One Economics on the same topic.

Podcasts

Job switchers: Is the pay bump worth it? | Wall Street Journal
As of June 2022, workers who stayed in their current jobs in the last three months received on average a lower wage raise than job switchers. But is there a trade-off when one leaves his/her current job for a new one? The podcast also mentions the inflationary effect of increasing wages.

Behind the scenes of the jobs report | The Indicator
A great short story on the people who collect the data we all use. Great to show students how datasets are actually constructed using surveys and sampling.

How inflation is impacting salary negotiations | Marketplace
A survey showed that more than 60% of workers plan on asking for a pay raise in 2022. However, this is likely to create a wage-price spiral: prices increase, workers negotiate higher wages, businesses increase prices to be able to pay higher wages.

Your jobs questions, answered | The Indicator
Lots of great (micro and macro) questions about the labor market such as: How has the ability to apply for jobs online affected the labor market? Are the trade wars affecting the U.S. labor market? Steal them as your own or have students listen along. Pairs well with BLS data and choosing a career above.

The long French goodbye | Planet Money
Unlike the US, France allows judges to determine whether or not workers’ severance packages are sufficient when a company closes.

Additional Resources

Labor Markets: Multiple-Choice Questions | MRU

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