Historical analysis of employment, unemployment, labour mobility, income support and the policies that shape incentives to work. Each article retains its original publication date and economic setting.
Ten dated perspectives on labour indicators, regulation and social insurance. Historical claims should be read in the context of the period discussed.
An archive analysis of how interacting tax and benefit proposals discussed during the 2016 US election could have altered effective marginal tax rates and work incentives.
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A discussion of entry requirements, transfers between occupations and why workers’ ability to move between jobs matters in a changing economy.
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This article distinguishes the use of unemployment as an indicator of spare capacity from its role in describing the broader social effects of joblessness.
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A historical examination of how programme design, benefit withdrawal and effective tax rates can influence employment decisions without reducing the issue to a single cause.
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A critical look at an unofficial unemployment series, the assumptions behind it and the official measures available for assessing different forms of labour underutilisation.
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A period-specific review of participation, underemployment and other indicators that supplemented the headline US unemployment rate during the recovery then under way.
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An archive comparison of two social-insurance approaches, including coverage, work incentives, protection against job loss and the possibility of combining them.
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A review of competing claims about deflation, with attention to debt burdens, wage adjustment, financial conditions and constraints on monetary policy.
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Historical context for concerns that falling prices could interact with debt, wages, demand and limited monetary-policy room in Europe during 2014.
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The second part of an archive series considers evidence on how unconditional income support could affect labour supply and household employment decisions.
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A headline measure becomes more useful when its definition, population and time period are clear.
Employment, unemployment and inactivity refer to different groups and should not be treated as interchangeable.
Short-term movements can be noisy. Longer trends and revisions provide essential context.
Participation, hours, earnings and underemployment can reveal conditions hidden by a headline rate.
Older articles describe the rules and economic circumstances prevailing when they were published.
This archive approaches labour markets from several connected economic perspectives.
Guides to unemployment, participation, underemployment and the assumptions behind alternative indicators.
Analysis of licensing, wage adjustment and other rules that can affect movement between jobs.
Historical debates about unemployment insurance, basic income, taxes and benefit withdrawal.
Economic Monitor uses British English in its current editorial presentation. Historical URLs are preserved so existing links continue to work.
No. They are archive pieces from 2014–2016. Each summary identifies the original publication date and treats the analysis as historical.
No. Standard unemployment measures generally cover people without a job who meet specified availability and job-search criteria. Other people without work may be classified as economically inactive.
No single statistic captures employment conditions completely. Participation, hours, earnings, vacancies and broader underemployment measures can add context.
It is a broad description of underused labour resources. Depending on the analysis, it may include unemployed people, involuntary part-time workers or people marginally attached to the workforce.
No. The archive is provided for general educational and editorial use, not personalised employment, investment, tax or legal advice.