Racial and ethnic earnings disparities have been salient features of the U.S. economy for decades. Between the pandemic-driven recession in 2020 and the rising inflation since 2021, workers’ real and nominal earnings have seen rapid change. To get a sense of how recent economic conditions have affected earnings disparities, we examine real and nominal weekly earnings trends for Asian, Black, Hispanic, and white workers. We find that average real weekly earnings have been declining in the pa...| Liberty Street Economics
Maxim Pinkovskiy is an economic research advisor in Microeconomics. Maxim's research interests include studying the world distribution of income and understanding the dynamics of the health care sector in the United States. Other research interests include public economics, economic growth and econometrics. Maxim received his Ph.D. from MIT in 2013, and a B.A. from Columbia University.| www.newyorkfed.org
In our previous post, we discussed how the labor market recovery—the “maximum employment” half of the Federal Reserve System’s dual mandate—featured not only a return of overall employment rates to pre-pandemic levels, but also a narrowing of racial and ethnic gaps in employment rates. In this post, we take up the second half of the dual mandate—price stability—and discuss heterogeneity in inflation rates faced by different demographic groups during the rise in inflation in 2021...| Liberty Street Economics
Rajashri Chakrabarti is an economic research advisor in Microeconomics and chair of the Research Group’s Data Strategy Committee. Her areas of interest include labor economics, consumer finance and economics of education. Her research focuses on educational investment decisions and future financial and economic outcomes, consumer debt and repayment, financial literacy, costs and returns to post-secondary education and educational finance and accountability. Prior to joining the NY Fed, Raji...| www.newyorkfed.org
