Blog

In this analysis, Kristen Broady, Eliana Buckner, Jennifer Umanzor, and Sarah Wheaton find that while nearly every school in our sample offered in-person experiences in March, only about 30 percent were planning to maintain that in-person experience by September. Public schools and community colleges were particularly likely to go online, which disproportionately impacted students of color as well as low-income students.

In this analysis, Wendy Edelberg and Stephanie Lu examine the benefits of social insurance programs such as unemployment insurance, rental assistance, and subsidized health insurance. They recommend improving automatic stabilizers so that ad hoc policymaking in the face of an economic downturn becomes the exception, rather than the rule. 

To conclude the year, Alexandra Contreras, Elizabeth Lee, and Stephanie Lu present here a month-by-month journey in figures through The Hamilton Project’s research, analysis, and policy proposals.

Using updated data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) for 2019, the authors of this blog find that the Black-white wealth gap present heading into the COVID-19 pandemic leaves Black households with far fewer resources to weather the storm.

Although Congress' extraordinary measures early in the pandemic created income streams for millions of unemployed workers, they will not continue into 2021 without further congressional action. With the help of an interactive, Lauren Bauer, Wendy Edelberg, and Stephanie Lu discuss the negative consequences of allowing unemployment benefits to lapse at the end of 2020.

In this analysis, Lauren Bauer provides evidence of an ongoing food insecurity crisis in the United States and current evidence on household food insecurity and very low food insecurity among children by child age.

In this analysis, Aaronson and Edelberg find evidence of structural damage in the monthly employment data. Early in the pandemic, most workers who lost jobs were laid off temporarily, as businesses expected to reopen and recall their workers.

This analysis shows the effects on economic activity, as measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), of illustrative versions of several policies. Specifically, researchers examine five policies: a second round of checks to households, a resumption of enhanced unemployment insurance benefits, aid to state and local governments, support for small businesses, and other forms of fiscal support.

In this analysis, we present two data interactives that let you explore how trends in teen labor force participation and school enrollment during the academic year and the summer have changed in the past 20 years (2000 to 2020) and across the United States in 2020, by gender and race.

In a new video, Lauren Bauer explains the problem of food security in America and avenues for addressing it.

Between 9 and 17 million children live in a household where the adults say that their children do not have enough to eat, and they do not have the resources to purchase more food. Lauren Bauer and Jana Parsons find that prepared meal programs are reaching a fraction of the eligible population, evidence that supports an extension of Pandemic EBT.

An eviction moratorium during the COVID-19 pandemic is critical for the health and economic security of renters—but it is only half the solution. Without rental assistance, we find that “mom and pop” landlords of modest means will experience a significant income shock due to the loss of rental income under the moratorium.

This blog post features five figures from recent Hamilton Project essays and analyses that illustrate the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for continued policy response.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of essential workers are confronting new public health hazards in their workplace. Yet because of mass de-unionization over the past 40 years, most of these workers lack union representation. In this blog, Jimmy O'Donnell builds upon prior Hamilton Project work, shows how workplace conditions have changed for workers, and discusses the potential role for private-sector labor unions.

Jevay Grooms, Alberto Ortega, and Joaquín Rubalcaba present new survey data revealing disparities in outcomes related to the COVID-19 pandemic across race/ethnicity and employment status. Their findings underscore the need to strengthen federal assistance targeted to Black and Hispanic households.

In this blog post, researchers show that there is room for Congress to improve the triggers under current law that turn on and maintain the Unemployment Insurance Extended Benefits program to support the long-term unemployed when the labor market is weak. They also show that there is room for states to take full advantage of provisions under current law by opting into more generous benefit extensions.

In this piece, Lauren Bauer presents new evidence that almost 18 percent of children in the US did not have sufficient food as recently as the third week in June during the COVID-19 pandemic, meriting a substantial and immediate public investment.

Since the March Employment Situation, the number of respondents reporting as "employed but absent from work due to other reasons" has risen as a share of the labor force. In this blog, Lauren Bauer, Wendy Edelberg, Jimmy O'Donnell, and Jay Shambaugh explore the nature and magnitude of this phenomenon and analyze who these "potentially misclassified" respondents are.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, broad-based income support through both direct checks and unemployment insurance have been essential in limiting the income losses. However in this blog post, Jana Parsons shows that more can be done to provide relief for families in need, with TANF as a key and underutilized part of the solution.

In this analysis, Ryan Nunn, Jimmy O'Donnell, and Jay Shambaugh consider several policy options that could help boost workers’ wages. The authors also provide a categorization of which workers qualify as essential—performing functions society urgently needs that must be done in person—and then detail their incomes and their demographic characteristics.

The rapid contraction of the economy this spring has shattered records for the speed of onset of a recession. One of the most economically important pieces of the nearly $3 trillion policy response has been the rapid expansion of unemployment insurance (UI). Our preliminary calculations suggest that UI offset a small portion of personal income loss in March 2020, but roughly half of lost wages and salaries in April.

This blog post explores two important labor market disadvantages observed for nontraditional workers: more volatile hours and less health insurance coverage.

In this blog post, Lauren Bauer documents new evidence from two nationally representative surveys that were initiated to provide up-to-date estimates of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the incidence of food insecurity.