Moving the Needle

"Most research on poverty focuses on the damage that persistent unemployment causes for individuals, families, and neighborhoods. But what happens when jobs are plentiful and workers are hard to come by? Persistent labor shortages became the norm in 2022, but there have been a number of periods in American history where tight labor markets prevailed. Moving the Needle examines what happens when conditions favorable to workers create market pressures that boost wages at the bottom, improve benefits, pull the unemployed from the sidelines to the center of a burgeoning job market, lengthen job ladders, and dampen credentialism. Utilizing 79 years of quantitative and historical data, as well as fieldwork among employers, jobseekers, and long-time residents of poor neighborhoods, this book explores how profoundly positive tight labor markets are for labor and recommends policies that would keep that momentum moving when the conditions that spur it forward no longer hold"--