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Reposted by Betsey Stevenson

University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy @fordschool.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Companies are bringing workers back to the office 5 days a week. Does this lack of flexible work arrangements have a higher impact on women in the labor force? Economist @betseystevenson.bsky.social told @npr.org “definitely.” Read Stevenson’s insights: myumi.ch/9JpMP

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Employers seems able to hire all the workers that they want, so is this a tight labor market? Long-term unemployment is still rising, job growth has been concentrated in just a few industries. And yet, wow, +172K is impressive. And the 3-month average is even more impressive.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

It’s almost like they want to create a permanent underclass.

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Reposted by Betsey Stevenson

The Hamilton Project @hamiltonproject.org · 13/04/2026

An overwhelming majority of American workers—over 90 percent—support the right to earned time off. @betseystevenson.bsky.social explains what a federal guarantee of earned paid time off could look like—and how it would benefit all workers: www.hamiltonproject.org/publication/...

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Wars are times of declining living standards for everyone.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Most people don’t need the BLS to tell them that energy prices are up, but still…the largest one month gain in the energy index in 21 years. Pushing the entire index up 0.9 percent in one month.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Core inflation excludes food and energy, it’s too soon for those prices to be impacted by the Iran war, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be. Higher energy prices ultimately effects the cost of making and transporting many things.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

This is the kind of debate around Fed policy that is normal and healthy.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Three predictions for tonight: Trump will (1)claim more are working even though the percent employed is lower (2) claim he solved inflation even though the rate remains too high and people continue to be frustrated at price levels (3) lean heavily into hate to remind people who "the real enemy is"

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

I hear the President plans to announce a tax cut for American businesses and people that he's doing without Congress. Some argue he can't cut taxes without Congress, but he can: Ending all of his tariffs would be a big tax cut for American companies and workers. Fingers crossed!

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

Tariffs are taxes and that means without the tariffs there is a revenue problem, but that doesn't mean we should give the President broad authority to tax whoever he wants whoever much he wants. Congress needs to act.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Traditionally the GOP was the anti-tax, free-trade party, the is the first GOP President to be anti-competition, pro-tax, at least on consumers and small businesses.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

The only certainty we got today is only that IEEPA does not give the president sweeping powers to levy tariffs. We are not done in the tariff battle. And refunds? I'm not going to hold my breath.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

The markets are only down 1-2% but don't let that lull you into thinking that what Trump is doing in Europe isn't that bad. They've priced in a high probablility that he'll back down.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

We are bleeding manufacturing and goods producing jobs, not *despite* the tariffs, but probably *because* of them given the ham-fisted approach to tariffs.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

Employment data is continuing to paint a picture of a labor market in which few are losing jobs, but few are finding jobs. And job growth is only really occurring in private sector health & education and leisure and hospitality which added 88K. Every other sector together lost 38K jobs in December.

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Reposted by Betsey Stevenson

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

The decline of democracy in the US means you can’t visit the US if you commented on the decline of democracy in the US

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

The findings on the cost of Brexit--a loss of 6-8% of GDP and it's not over--can be thought of as the cost of not redistributing in a way that ensures widespread benefits from growth. Instead of an equity-efficiency trade-off, equity might have helped foster more efficiency in this case.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Is it too soon to be done with winter?

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

Millions of food insecure Americans are being treated like bargaining chips in a political showdown. They have no political power, no lobbyists, and no way to influence whether the government reopens. Using them as leverage is cruel.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

People aren't happy with the state of the economy and the real weakness for the GOP is that independents are less happy about it than they were a year ago. You can't just lie to people about energy prices, they will open their heating bill and see the difference pretty clearly.

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Reposted by Betsey Stevenson

Jameel Jaffer @jameeljaffer.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Don’t believe anyone who tells you that intelligence shows anything “without a doubt,” but even if the intelligence was water-tight, this strike was still murder. No law permits the deliberate, premeditated killing of civilians.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Cities with violent crime rates higher than DC: Memphis, Tennessee Houston, Texas Nashville, Tennessee Evansville, Indiana Peoria, Illinois Toleda, Ohio Cleveland, Ohio St Louis, Missouri Kansas City, Missouri Springfield, Missouri Little Rock, Arkansas for more: usafacts.org/articles/how...

usafacts.org

Which cities have the highest and lowest crime rates? | USAFacts

Crime rates stayed constant from 2020 to 2021, but national crime data remains incomplete with about 37% of law enforcement agencies not reporting data last year.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

I understand why Trump wants a command and control economy with him at the center. What is confusing to me is why the entire Republican party is so willing to walk so far from a competitive, market-based economy.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

If the concern was really around accuracy why did the Trump administration dismiss the **uncompensated** Technical Advisory Committee and the Data Users Advisory Committee, which gave guidance on statistical methodology and specialized economic expertise?

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

There were 159,539,000 jobs in July. The fears about accuracy refer to the possibility that it was actually 159,439,000 or 159,639,000. Don't get me wrong, I like accurate numbers more than most people, but still: the data is pretty darn good and suspending the data is corrupt.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

One easy way to hide rising unemployment, slowing job growth, and rising prices would be to pause the data release for a few months in the name of "accuracy" and then release it with new definitions a few months later that make it incomparable to the past.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

The Fed can't be dovish or hawkish right now, they have to be doggish--data doggish that is. nytimes.com/2025/07/02/b...

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Tariffs are not going to mean that we have more goods-producing jobs in the US. What they will do is change the relative price of goods versus services, pushing Americans to buy fewer goods relative to services. If you are worried about American overconsumption of stuff, then hooray! 🧵

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

The United States GDP per capita is 20 times great than it was at the start of the Guilded Age. And yet so many in power remain just as insensitive, greedy, and detached from the realities of poverty and suffering. Imagine getting that much richer and not using any of it on empathy.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

This fun, creative contest seriously highlights how hard the entire Planet Money team works to communicate economics in a way that both educates and entertains.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

The public needs to hear this over and over again: work requirements are not about getting Medicaid recipients to work. It’s about increasing the administrative burdens and costs in the system to push both recipients and the program itself to the breaking point.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

You might be getting bored of tariff talk but the rubber is going to hit the road in the coming months as price increases hit. Walmart tells investors that it's raising prices later this month. And inflation expectations have shot up a shocking amount in the Michigan consumer survey released today.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

If they really wanted to incentivize work, they would require married stay-at-home moms to work. The second earner effect is their best chance for a work requirement to influence work at all. There is no first earner impact.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Walmart might not raise every price by the amount of the tariff, but they aren't going to let their profitability suffer. Their shareholders demand profit maximization and that means passing along tariffs to the fullest extent possible without losing too many sales.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

On @allinwithchris.bsky.social @chrislhayes.bsky.social asked me why tariffs will raise prices if a higher minimum wage doesn't always lead to higher prices. The answer: People are not things. They respond to a change in their compensation, a sippy cup doesn't.

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Reposted by Betsey Stevenson

Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

It's true. President Trump is forcing economists to rewrite their textbooks. #TeachEcon @betseystevenson.bsky.social

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

And now Walmart is telling us definitely higher prices in June. Just because there aren’t problems in the hard data yet, doesn’t mean that they aren’t forecastably coming.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

My concern is that we'll see a weaker employment report in June and July, of course the labor market was strong in April. That report measured the weak after liberation day and despite the shock of Trump's tariffs, employers aren't going to shed workers that quickly.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

I didn't post my NBC Fed preview before the press conference. Luckily my preview was exactly what they did and said.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Reporters seem to think that the only direction for rates to go is down, but Powell shuts that assumption down by saying "once you have a clear direction" Rates could go either way people!!! It depends on what happens with inflation.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

The Fed can wait because they can't change a decline in supply due to the distruption in imports. They can try to decrease demand for that reduction in supply to help reduce inflationary pressure, but they can't create jobs to make up for those lost due to the reduction in imported goods.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Powell made a pretty strong case for why the Fed has to ensure that the one time price increase caused by tariffs doesn't cause inflation expectations to become unanchored.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Nothing Powell said is surprising, this is the sensible decision making of a balanced and reasonable group of monetary policy makers who are walking a tight rope.

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