The October 2025 issue of AEJ: Applied Economics (17, 4) is now available online at aeaweb.org/issues/820.

Not quite sure how to put it all in words, but I just spent an extraordinary day celebrating my dissertation adviser, Larry Katz. Feeling grateful, proud, and (re-) inspired. Larry has raised so many extraordinary economists that being in the same room as them was overwhelming.

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Technically speaking, blackmail is not regulation

Chief Justice Roberts (2007): “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Justice Kavanaugh (2025): ethnicity “can be a 'relevant factor' when considered along with other salient factors” in immigration stops.

The larger-than-usual downward revision last month was in large part driven by a negative skew in the job growth distribution among late reporting firms. That’s unusual, but it’s happened before when the pace of job growth slows rapidly. This print is more evidence that was the case

USDA quietly said Friday it will, after a century, end the Farm Labor Survey (FLS), the only wage survey of ag employers. FLS is a critical input to setting local minimum wages for H-2A visa workers to try to avoid harm to U.S. workers' wages. #LaborDay #EconSky www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/Not...

Synthetic Control Method be like

A key challenge for BLS is adequate funding for data collection and modernization. During my tenure I tried to identify the causes. One person told me, ‘your problem is that while BLS has no enemies you also have no friends’ meaning no powerful interest groups advocating for economic data.

Data revisions are a normal, necessary part of trying to measure a $30 trillion economy in real time. They can also be jarring, especially for people who don't obsessively scrutinize every jobs report. So I dug into the how and why of revisions. A few big takeaways: #EconSky

During the latest PSG Consulting webinar, @geoffgarin.bsky.social and the @hartresearch.bsky.social team highlighted new research on how younger voters are more likely to see Trump as divisive and to disapprove of his othering tactics. A few key findings from the research on young voters:

AEA Statement on Dismissal of BLS Comm. "The independence of the federal statistical agencies is essential to the proper functioning of a modern economy. Accurate, timely, and impartial statistics are the foundation upon which households, businesses, and policymakers make critical decisions."

For months, people have been asking me whether I still trusted gov’t data. My answer was always the same: The stats agencies faced longstanding challenges, some of which Trump was making worse. But there was no sign of political meddling. I can’t say that anymore. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/b...

For six months, I've said that threats to economic data have been more collateral damage than intentional harm. No longer. Firing the head of the BLS is five-alarm intentional harm to the integrity of US economic data and the entire statistical system.

Our friends at the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities are hiring a senior research program manager. They're seeking someone with a Master’s or PhD in economics, public policy, or a related field, and solid experience managing applied research projects. careers.nd.edu/search-caree...

1/ New working paper with Trevor Bakker, @stefanie-deluca.bsky.social, Eric English, Jamie Fogel, and Nathan Hendren: We use newly linked Census, IRS, and credit bureau data to explore differences in credit access by race, class, and hometown. djh1202.github.io/website/cre... 🧵...

How much would you need to be paid to stay in a job that became more risky? @koenig-felix.bsky.social and @massimo-anelli.bsky.social #economics blogs.lse.ac.uk/busi...

I've been teaching at Princeton over the same period and the drop-off in reading stamina has been staggering. I'm not sure of the cause -- some blame K-12 shifts to "chunk reading" while others pin it on COVID -- but it's undeniable.

New research from the NEWS project on income and poverty from 2016-2021 Using survey, census, admin and commercial data, we show that survey estimates understate income and overstate poverty. Release at www.census.gov/data/experim..., interactive plots at jrothbaum.github.io/news.html

We asked co-director @davidautor.bsky.social if he thinks US tariffs and trade policy signal the end of the globalization era. He explains: "I don't think globalization is over, but I think the US leadership of globalization may be over."

If this is substantiated every single justice department attorney who touched the filings denying jurisdiction should be disbarred unless they're individually willing to put in a sworn statement declaring that they were told something different and identifying who lied to them about it

So the National Archives will no longer be open… to the nation? “Legitimate business needs” only. That’s a whole lot of US history that is now ripe for being rewritten. www.archives.gov/college-park

Every. Time. It’s a bad jobs problem, not labor scarcity. “Many Americans aren’t interested in factory jobs because they often do not pay enough to lure workers away from service jobs that may have more flexible schedules or more comfortable working environments.” www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/b...

Every. Time. It’s a bad jobs problem, not labor scarcity. “Many Americans aren’t interested in factory jobs because they often do not pay enough to lure workers away from service jobs that may have more flexible schedules or more comfortable working environments.” www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/b...

The news isn’t being clear about this but to people hearing about these Minnesota shootings: Melissa Hortman is the Dem leader in the Minnesota House and was Speaker of the House 2019-2025. She’s probably the most influential state-level Democrat barring the governor.

EXTREMELY BAD NEWS for economic research, per former BLS Commissioner @ericagroshen.bsky.social on LinkedIn. BLS is suspending access to its restricted data "for the forseeable future." Applies to projects through the Federal Statistical Research Data Centers & onsite projects with BLS. #EconSky

since people give the nyt so much crap for milquetoast headlines, someone should acknowledge that this one is pretty 💅 www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/u...

This chart is misleading. Only 8% of the US labor force is in manufacturing, so 20% of individuals wanting to work in manufacturing is more than double the actual.

The Constitution does not give the President the power to order around state law enforcement this way, and Supreme Court precedent makes clear that feds also cannot use funding leverage to commandeer the states, even if Congress explicitly consents to that, which it has not done here.

All of NIH funding to Northwestern University is frozen. This pause includes noncompeting approved funding, new and competing grants with fundable scores. No reimbursements for money already spent have been received since March. This situation is rarely reported so please Please get the word out!

America cannot long remain free, nor first among nations, if it becomes the kind of place where universities are dismantled because they don't align politically with the current head of the government.

FWIW Attacks on Harvard happen, bc demonstrates that * Dissent will not be tolerated so shut up * Strong signal *because* costly Arguments on costs to US are useless. How do i know this? Happened to CEU by Orban in 2017. Struck down by EU court in 2020 but it was late. We had to move to Vienna.

Three things made the US a rich and powerful nation: the rule of law, its science & innovation system, and openness to foreign talent. Remarkable how Trump has taken a sledgehammer to all three. No enemy of this country could do more.

I want one, and I don’t want the US government undermining the development, distribution, and accessibility of COVID boosters.

Tired: how is this economics? Wired: how is this zoology?

New study: The relative wage premium for going to college has halved for low-income Americans since 1960. What is to blame? Rising selectivity? Tuition hikes? State disinvestment? We decompose changes in the premium since 1900 to find out. 🧵#EconTwitter nber.org/papers/w33797

The Republican plan to bury Medicaid recipients in paperwork Proposed work requirements for aid won’t create jobs, but they will kick the working poor off health care www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Per my wife: “more like DUMBarton oaks!”

Excited to have this paper out in JPubEc. Relevant to folks pondering/evaluating/designing corporate tax bases!

📢 WE are hiring a Professor in Labor Economics at JKU Linz! Come and join us! We are a young and active department with a strong focus in applied econ. Link: tinyurl.com/jkulabor Please help us spread the word and RT.

Modeling the conclave? You’ll need cardinal utilities

It took an incredible outcry from victims and the NY Senators to get RFK Jr to rehire the few staff so the 911 victim program can function. They also must restore the other 900 staff in NIOSH,the only agency that investigates workplace toxins and dangers and develops solutions to protect workers.

One of most alarming red flags to date. Not so much for the impact, but for what it says about Trumps’ footsoldiers’ devotion to his cult of personality. This is full-on dictator mythmaking.

I continue to be surprised at how little the Democratic party has engaged with its loss of trust on education. In Massachusetts, many recent K-12 policy developments have weakened my trust in the system. Finding myself agreeing with a lot of this post: www.slowboring.com/p/the-new-je...

One of the wilder political things in recent history is that Project 2025 publicly released a 900 page document laying out their plans to roll back 100 years of human progress and then during the campaign Republicans just said "no we're not :)" and then they won and now they're doing it all.

In case you see this, note that the university is explicit that these are being ended because SB1 requires schools to cull low enrollment majors to save money, and these are all below the enrollment minimums, not because of DEI. signalcleveland.org/university-o...

Boys growing up in counties where new wartime factories were built went on to earn more than did their peers from counties without new factories. Those from the poorest families got the biggest boost. Research at: www.upjohn.org/research-hig... #ECRA #EconSky

30 years after arriving in the US, I just resigned from Northwestern and we sold our house. We are an American family, I became a citizen in 2014, and until recently did not expect to ever leave. But now, this no longer feels like the right place to raise a family and pursue a research career.

This is such a great and cool project by the authors -- using LLMs to break the barrier of documenting fine-grained regulation data. Plus, they made the data publicly available! Their overall regulatory index *at the tract level* is strongly correlated with house-price-to-income in the census.

📢Heavily revised working paper on AI + Zoning — with @alexbartik.bsky.social and Dan Milo, we have a new draft of our paper which expands on our method to understand housing regulations with AI. Incudes a new public data release with more housing regulation data: