Moving the Needle
What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor
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This timely investigation reveals how sustained tight labor markets improve the job prospects and life chances of America’s most vulnerable households.
Most research on poverty focuses on the damage caused by persistent unemployment. But what happens when jobs are plentiful and workers are hard to come by? Moving the Needle examines how very low unemployment boosts wages at the bottom, improves benefits, lengthens job ladders, and pulls the unemployed into a booming job market.
Drawing on over seventy years of quantitative data, as well as interviews with employers, jobseekers, and longtime residents of poor neighborhoods, Katherine S. Newman and Elisabeth S. Jacobs investigate the most durable positive consequences of tight labor markets. They also consider the downside of overheated economies that can ignite surging rents and spur outmigration. Moving the Needle is an urgent and original call to implement policies that will maintain the current momentum and prepare for potential slowdowns that may lie ahead.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this astute and timely study, economists Newman (Downhill from Here) and Jacobs (coauthor, Who Cares?) document how economic upswings affect the lives of the working poor. Among other profile subjects, the authors spotlight Sam Conrad, who spent 20 years in and out of Massachusetts prisons before entering a postincarceration return-to-work program in 2017 and quickly working his way up to a well-paying union job. These and other stories give a human element to data suggesting that when the unemployment rate falls below average, employers are compelled to hire ex-inmates, former drug addicts, high school dropouts, immigrants, the chronically unemployed, and others who would normally be passed over. More notably, when such workers are given an initial foothold, they frequently surpass expectations; according to the authors, workers with criminal records have higher retention and lower turnover rates than the general population, despite being offered the hardest, least desirable jobs. Among other suggestions to help "consolidate" the gains impoverished families face during tight labor markets, Newman and Jacobs call for increasing the minimum wage, incentivizing employers to provide on-the-job training, and fostering tuition assistance programs. Clinical yet compassionate, this is a valuable resource for activists, scholars, and policymakers on the front lines of the battle to end poverty.
