Jared Bernstein Quotes on Labor (13 Quotes)

In the absence of immigrant labor, wages might be a bit higher, particularly in sectors that hire lots of low-skilled labor, which could potentially show up as slightly higher prices.

I'm not sure this report convinces us that a recovery is underway in the labor market in any big way.

This doesn't look like a significantly different report than we've gotten in past months, but that's significant in itself. The labor market is clearly stuck in neutral.

Folks are coming back into the labor market, but they're not finding jobs there. The tepid pace of job growth was too low to keep unemployment from rising. We're looking at a fairly weak recovery, at least initially.

The weakness in the labor market is clearly reducing the growth of earnings, meaning consumers, most of who depend on their paychecks, are likely to remain insecure about where the economy is headed. This in turn has the potential to constrain consumption

There is no reason to believe...that Congress has authorized the Department of Labor to dramatically reduce coverage...taking overtime protection away from millions of workers. Yet that is exactly what the Department of Labor has proposed.

More people are coming in to the labor force, and we're not creating enough jobs to put much downward pressure on the unemployment rate. But this is better news than expected.

This could mean that the labor market is another area coming on line in the nation's recovery.

These numbers reveal a labor market that's not bouncing back quickly enough to absorb new entrants along with the people laid off during the downturn.

This is a pretty negative report. The reason unemployment ticked down is the labor force contracted. That suggests fewer people are getting into the game, looking for work, and that kind of discouragement can lead to a lower unemployment rate.

A number of other reports suggest the labor market is finally hitting its stride, one weekly claims number is not enough to undermine that conclusion.

There may be some signs that a fledgling recovery is beginning to take hold in the labor market, but we have had these kinds of moves before, so we don't want to make too much out of it.

These top line numbers suggest we are into what's beginning to look like a jobless recovery. We simply can't drive unemployment down if we're only adding 30 or 40,000 jobs. So, basically, we're looking at a situation where the recovery is calling, but the labor market isn't really picking up the phone.