The labor force is the number of people aged 16 or older who are either working or looking for work. It does not include active-duty military personnel or institutionalized people, such as prison inmates. Quantifying this total supply of labor is a way of determining how big the economy can get. Labor force participation rates vary significantly…

The population of recent college graduates has been growing more slowly in New England than in the rest of the United States, and New England states are concerned that an inadequate supply of skilled workers may hamper economic growth. In some sense, New England is a victim of its own success. The region's colleges and universities excel at…

The Boston metropolitan area is recognized by many for its concentration of prestigious private colleges and universities. The metropolitan area is home to over 80 private colleges and universities employing 68,600 people and attracting over 360,000 students from all over the world. This report uses employment and wage data from the Bureau of…

After a long decline, the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) of older men in the United States leveled off in the 1980s, and began to increase in the late 1990s. We examine how changes in Social Security rules affected these trends. We attribute only a small portion of the decline from the 1960s-80s to the increasing generosity of Social…

This article reports the findings of a study of the experiences and expectations of a cohort of 13 "Academic Coaches", appointed to temporary teaching support roles in challenging inner city secondary schools. The discussion of this particular initiative is located in a broader consideration of the work and conditions of…

This article reports the finding of a study entitled, "Where the Engineers Are," conducted by a group of researchers at Duke University, which was published in the spring issue of Issues in Science and Technology and is a follow-up to a 2005 study. This new report on the number and quality of graduate engineering degrees conferred in…

This article analyzes employment data from the U.S. census (1960 to 1990) using the Holland classification. The census data are organized according to category of occupation, occupational level, gender, and income. The results indicate that the distributions of employment are similar from 1960 to 1990 despite some major shifts within several…

The authors analyze civilian occupations and employment data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 with respect to 6 kinds of work (Holland's RIASEC [Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional] classification), employment, and gender. For the 1990 and 2000 censuses, kinds of work,…

Any audience of women contains a much higher percentage of those who consider themselves to be working women than the statistics indicate. Marketers who adhere to simplistic definitions of working women risk making mistakes in the placement of their ads and in the images of women in their messages. (JOW)

Provides a detailed look at the labor market situation during 1983. Gives a brief overview of the recovery compared with previous recoveries and discusses selected characteristics of the jobless and labor force participation rates. (SK)

CURRENT AND PROJECTED EMPLOYMENT STATISTICS ARE GIVEN FOR THE STATE AND FOR THE DENVER STANDARD METROPOLITAN STATISTICAL AREA WHICH INCLUDES ADAMS, ARAPAHOE, BOULDER, DENVER, AND JEFFERSON COUNTIES. DATA WERE OBTAINED FROM THE COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT, DENVER RESEARCH INSTITUTE, U.S. CENSUS, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, MOUNTAIN STATES…

Introduces this special issue on the Bureau of Labor Statistics' new projections of the occupational, industrial, and demographic structure of the labor force, which present a detailed look at the U.S. economy in 2006. (JOW)

Fewer teenagers are participating in the labor force today than at any point since WWII. At just under 44 percent teen labor force participation is 15 percentage points below its peak in the late 1970s. The authors investigate the long-run decline in the work activity of young adults, and the acceleration of this trend during the last five years.…

Latino male students are "vanishing" from the American education pipeline, a trend that is especially evident at the secondary and postsecondary levels. The question of why Latino males are vanishing from America's colleges is complex, and this scholarly article explores some of the socio-cultural factors, peer dynamics, and labor force demands…

Findings from previous studies examining the relation between women's employment and the risk of intimate partner violence have been mixed. Some studies find greater violence toward women who are employed, whereas others find the opposite relation or no relation at all. I propose a new framework in which a woman's employment status and her risk of…