So this phrase “able-bodied” has clearly been on the most recent list of R talking points. It comes from the first round of English labor laws, which were instituted after the Black Death. A mini medieval story time!

I'm hiring 2 research assistants on my team at IWPR! Our team is made up of brilliant researchers across economics, sociology, education, and health and we are looking for some sharp and enthusiastic staff to help us build evidence to advance women's equity! iwpr.applytojob.com/apply/pALkWV...

I use @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social podcasts all the time in my teaching so was extra fun to join them to talk about Good Company didn't quite dwell on how cynical I am rn about the ending of shareholder primacy but must keep pushing no matter what podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/g...

For the June issue of TNR: I went long on the problems with the recent wave of abortion rights ballot initiatives, focusing on Missouri, which “won” back their rights in November, but for most Missourians, abortions are still nearly impossible to get.

New in @msmagazine.com from the big boss Dr. Jamila Taylor and me on what the attacks on data mean for advancing equity and social and economic goals: msmagazine.com/2025/05/20/t...

The boss Dr. Jamila Taylor in @newsweek.com on Black maternal health! Read below.

Got to talk MAGA plans to enforce gender essentialism on ALL women and why solidarity is how we fight back and win with the brilliant @sarahljaffe.bsky.social and @lipstickecon.bsky.social progressive.org/magazine/our...

My daughter Louise made her TV news debut on @nbcwashington.com last night, where I talked about how the return-to-office mandate impacts federal workers with caregiving responsibilities while also caregiving for her when I was on parental leave 🫠. www.nbcwashington.com/investigatio...

Today is AANHPI Equal Pay Day! Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women still earn less than white men. Learn more about the level of the wage gaps across the country, the causes, and the policy solutions with IWPR's new factsheet: iwpr.org/breaking-bar...

Great new piece by @lipstickecon.bsky.social on why federal worker cuts matter to women. One group of women to especially watch? Women veterans. More than one out of every six working women veterans works for the federal government: nationalpartnership.org/women-vetera...

In sum, 1. Labor markets remarkably strong & stable to now. 2. Mixed signals today: jobs 💪, avg hours steady, wages soft 3. If employers judge tariffs'll persist, this likely turns worse. Report'd mark the moment just before POTUS steered us away from soft landing into stagflationary ditch.

Strong jobs growth in March but will anybody care? The tariff turmoil still tempers the near-term outlook. -Payrolls up 228,000, well above expectations -Unemp ticked up again 4.2% -Wage growth slows to 3.8% YoY #NumbersDay #EconSky 1/

Jobs Report! Small-ish declines for federal workers (-4k) are just one sign of how bad things will get for the country's largest employer, especially for women workers. www.forbes.com/sites/kateba...

Throughout their careers, U.S. women earn less, on average, than do men. New research shows how drastically parenthood widens this gender gap. www.upjohn.org/research-hig...

In as much as public sector work is like reproductive labor en masse, I can't help but feel like conservative economic ideology à la Trump is just further demonstration of the administration's misogyny.

Walton Goggins's Citrus Noggins

Your tariff rate is your star sign divided by the number of boys you've kissed, multiplied by one

The latest #NumbersDay data out from the Department of Labor (www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf) continue to show significantly higher initial and continuing unemployment insurance claims for federal workers than this time last year, but these losses haven't spread to the private sector data (yet).

Me doing media calls while returning from maternity leave.

Maybe go at least 5 minutes between "good trouble" and "we don't want to cause any trouble."

Dismantling unions will make it harder for workers to access paid leave, paid sick time, fair pay, and other critical protections. This is an anti-family and anti-woman move. Solidarity with unions and the federal workforce every day.

Boston folks: check out this event on Black women in solidarity finance with the inimitable @carolinehossein.bsky.social!

"The issue of whether workers and work is wasteful is a subjective call that AI cannot make. But it can justify what a decision maker wants to do. If Musk wants waste, AI can give him #s to prove waste exists." - @tressiemcphd.bsky.social great piece on framing www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/o...

Join IWPR this Thursday at 1pm for "Supporting Workers, Strengthening Families: What We Learned from Workers on DC Paid Family Leave" us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

First day back at work since before Thanksgiving. Did I miss anything in policy, politics, or the economy over the last four months? 🫠

And a hot off the presses work from @lipstickecon.bsky.social's awesome team at IWPR on the impacts of workplace flexibility on women's health: iwpr.org/wp-content/u...

If you are feeling hopeless, may I recommend listening to Congresswoman Sarah McBride speak?

Speaking as someone who did a lot of online dating in her 20s…if you have first name, last initial, and a general geographic location you can track information about people down pretty, pretty fast

Snuck off from parental leave to hear people talk about… parental leave! And other policies to advance gender equity in this critical moment: iwpr.org/federalpolic...

"Each dollar of government expenditure on [universal pre-kindergarten] yields $10.04 in benefits." www.nber.org/papers/w33038 Evidence from the USA (Connecticut)

Just had our data access rescinded for a projected using federal microdata to study and reduce disparate impact in housing markets.

NIH appears to have canceled/postponed all of its study sections—the independent review panels that approve federal grants for health research. Such grants fund the work/salaries of 300k people at more than 2,500 institutions

Life offline lately…

Trump established an email to rat on federal workers who continue to advance equal opportunity. [email protected]. Sure would be a shame if folks misused this email address and flooded it with irrelevant things…

My latest Forbes column on the #JobsReport, efficiency wages and productivity gains, and ~having it all~. www.forbes.com/sites/kateba...

Employment growth over expectations at 275k jobs added and unemployment up 0.2pp to 3.9%. That unemployment increase is a mix of people losing their jobs, people completing temporary work, and people reentering the labor market.

Happy #JobsDay.   At 8:30 am ET, BLS delivers the most-important signals abt how economy is changing.   Forecasts’ center: +198K jobs Unemployment rate (UR) steady at 3.7%

The economy is doing well. One reason people aren't feeling excited about it? Care is out of reach. W/o "more supports, a 3.7% unemployment rate is cold comfort to most families struggling to make their daily lives work." - @lipstickecon.bsky.social via Forbes www.forbes.com/sites/kateba...

Undoubtedly one of my favorite hot tips for the ASSAs is the LERA sessions breakfast.

Come work with me! The think tank at @rooseveltinstitute.bsky.social is hiring for entry and sr level positions: (1) a director to manage staff & develop fellows programming (2) a director to develop our program on race & democracy (3) a research associate rooseveltinstitute.org/careers/

This month's Jobs Report was very good, but how healthy can the economy feel if a basic need like care is still out of reach and care sector workers are underpaid? My first column as a Forbes contributor on the role of care in the economy: www.forbes.com/sites/kateba...

After a big jump in the unemployment rate for Black men up to 6.3% in November data, it has come back down to 4.6% in December data. These changes are not statistically significant and shows how volatile data on minority groups can be. (We need more data by race.)

One of my favorite Jobs Report indicators: 14 instances of the phrases "little changed" or "unchanged" in this month's jobs report. Demonstrative of chugging along. (I think my highest count of this ever was 17 little/unchanged.)

Today's Jobs Report looking pretty good to start, with 216k jobs added and unemployment holding steady at 3.7%. More landing softly.

New inflation and wage data shows that real wages are continuing to grow. For most workers (roughly the bottom 80%, production/non-supervisory), they are where you'd expect from prior to the pandemic. But all workers are seeing strong real wage growth now.

There is a real disconnect between people's lived experiences in the labor market (often bad) and labor market data (pretty good). I think part of what we're seeing is a reflection on the long-term trends we know well: wage inequality (even if a bit better rn) and significant barriers to mobility.

Good Jobs Report, but it's still hard to see how smaller populations of workers are doing with small data samples. Black men's unemployment went up 1.1 pp from 5.3% to 6.4%, but overall Black unemployment rate month-to-month change *is not statistically significant*: www.bls.gov/web/empsit/c...

Even as inflation has cooled, corporate profits are still hovering near all-time highs — and have been for over a year. There’s plenty of room for prices to go down and wages to go up, but only if we protect consumers by reining in corporate profiteering.

Post strike is over, so I can plug this piece. It was written on Wednesday but kicked to Thursday, so it ran without a byline. Turns out, contrary to what many Republicans assert, Whites face less racism than Blacks.