IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v171y2018icp159-163.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Wage inflation and informal work

Author

Listed:
  • Bracha, Anat
  • Burke, Mary A.

Abstract

Despite the low unemployment rate in the United States, wage inflation has remained modest. This paper investigates whether hidden labor market slack in the form of informal “gig” economy work could help explain this puzzle. Using our Survey of Informal Work Participation for 2015–2016 we find that informal labor is negatively associated with wage growth at the census division level, while no such association exists between wage growth and unemployment rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Bracha, Anat & Burke, Mary A., 2018. "Wage inflation and informal work," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 159-163.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:171:y:2018:i:c:p:159-163
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2018.07.033
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176518302933
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2018.07.033?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David N.F. Bell & David G. Blanchflower, 2018. "The Lack of Wage Growth and the Falling NAIRU," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 245(1), pages 40-55, August.
    2. Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 2016. "The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995-2015," Working Papers 603, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    3. Paul Castillo B. & Carlos Montoro Ll., 2012. "Inflation Dynamics in the Presence of Informal Labour Markets," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 15(1), pages 4-31, April.
    4. Katharine G. Abraham & John C. Haltiwanger & Kristin Sandusky & James R. Spletzer, 2017. "Measuring the Gig Economy: Current Knowledge and Open Issues," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century, pages 257-298, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Anat Bracha & Mary A. Burke, 2016. "Who counts as employed?: informal work, employment status, and labor market slack," Working Papers 16-29, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gerald D. Cohen, 2020. "Measuring employment during COVID-19: challenges and opportunities," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 55(4), pages 229-239, October.
    2. Bracha, Anat & Burke, Mary A., 2021. "How Big is the Gig? The Extensive Margin, The Intensive Margin, and The Hidden Margin," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    3. David N. F. Bell & David G. Blanchflower, 2021. "Underemployment in the United States and Europe," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 74(1), pages 56-94, January.
    4. John Komlos, 2019. "The Real U.S. Unemployment Rate Is Twice the Official Rate, and the Phillips Curve," CESifo Working Paper Series 7859, CESifo.
    5. Olena Kostyshyna & Corinne Luu, 2019. "The Size and Characteristics of Informal (“Gig”) Work in Canada," Staff Analytical Notes 2019-6, Bank of Canada.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christopher Alex Hooton, 2017. "America’s online ‘jobs’: conceptualizations, measurements, and influencing factors," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 52(4), pages 227-249, October.
    2. Joshua Greenstein, 2020. "The Precariat Class Structure and Income Inequality among US Workers: 1980–2018," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 447-469, September.
    3. Kässi, Otto & Lehdonvirta, Vili, 2018. "Online labour index: Measuring the online gig economy for policy and research," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 241-248.
    4. Lynn Riggs & Isabelle Sin & Dean Hyslop, 2019. "Measuring the “gig” economy: Challenges and options," Working Papers 19_18, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    5. Brice Corgnet & Simon Gaechter & Roberto Hernan Gonzalez, 2020. "Working Too Much for Too Little: Stochastic Rewards Cause Work Addiction," Discussion Papers 2020-03, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    6. Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 2019. "Understanding Trends in Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States," NBER Working Papers 25425, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Maria Cesira Urzi Brancati & Annarosa Pesole & Enrique Férnandéz-Macías, 2020. "New evidence on platform workers in Europe: Results from the second COLLEEM survey," JRC Research Reports JRC118570, Joint Research Centre.
    8. Peter Z. Schochet, 2021. "Long‐Run Labor Market Effects of the Job Corps Program: Evidence from a Nationally Representative Experiment," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(1), pages 128-157, January.
    9. Anat Bracha & Mary A. Burke, 2018. "The ups and downs of the gig economy, 2015–2017," Working Papers 18-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    10. Sheena McConnell & Peter Z. Schochet & Dana Rotz & Ken Fortson & Paul Burkander & Annalisa Mastri, 2021. "The Effects of Employment Counseling on Labor Market Outcomes for Adults and Dislocated Workers: Evidence from a Nationally Representative Experiment," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(4), pages 1249-1287, September.
    11. Bas Scheer & Wiljan van den Berge & Maarten Goos & Alan Manning & Anna Salomons, 2022. "Alternative Work Arrangements and Worker Outcomes: Evidence from Payrolling," CPB Discussion Paper 435, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    12. Jae Song & David J Price & Fatih Guvenen & Nicholas Bloom & Till von Wachter, 2019. "Firming Up Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(1), pages 1-50.
    13. Werner Eichhorst & Ulf Rinne, 2017. "Digital Challenges for the Welfare State," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 18(04), pages 03-08, December.
    14. Philippe Aghion & Ufuk Akcigit & Matthieu Lequien & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2017. "Tax simplicity and heterogeneous learning," CEP Discussion Papers dp1516, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    15. Jose Asturias & Emin Dinlersoz & John Haltiwanger & Rebecca Hutchinson, 2021. "Business Applications as Economic Indicators," Working Papers 21-09, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    16. Owolabi, Adegboyega O. & Berdiev, Aziz N. & Saunoris, James W., 2022. "Is the shadow economy procyclical or countercyclical over the business cycle? International evidence," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 257-270.
    17. Hirsch, Barry T. & Winters, John V., 2016. "Rotation group bias in measures of multiple job holding," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 160-163.
    18. Mossberger, Karen & LaCombe, Scott & Tolbert, Caroline J., 2022. "A new measure of digital economic activity and its impact on local opportunity," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(1).
    19. John C. Haltiwanger, 2022. "Entrepreneurship during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from the Business Formation Statistics," Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 9-42.
    20. Basu, Arnab K. & Chau, Nancy H. & Soundararajan, Vidhya, 2019. "Wage fairness in a subcontracted labor market," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 24-42.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Wage inflation; Gig economy; Labor market slack; Survey;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J46 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Informal Labor Market
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E26 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Informal Economy; Underground Economy
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:171:y:2018:i:c:p:159-163. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.