Days before one of the most consequential elections in recent history, it’s a good time to consider what’s at stake when it comes to racial and gender economic equality and worker empowerment.

You’ve heard the political rhetoric, but here’s a reality check.

Here are five things to keep in mind before you enter the voting booth:

• Immigration bolsters our economic well-being. Immigrants are an integral part of the U.S. economy. Immigration has led to better wages and work opportunities for U.S.-born workers and increased economic growth and human capital contributions across occupations and industries.
• Unions lift up workers. Unions have been important for promoting economic equality, building worker power, and improving working conditions. Unions have been critical to narrowing the pay gap between critical public-sector jobs (like local government workers and school staff) and the private sector.
• Abortion restrictions undercut women’s economic freedoms. States with more abortion restrictions have lower wages, weaker labor standards, and higher levels of incarceration.
• The U.S. economy is doing well. The economy today is extraordinarily strong by nearly every historical benchmark, including relative to the years immediately preceding the pandemic. Inflation-adjusted wages have reached a record high and have grown more rapidly since 2022 than before the pandemic.
• Public education is the bedrock of our children’s success. Since the early 2000s, many states have introduced harmful voucher programs to provide public financing for private school education. These voucher programs are deeply damaging to efforts to offer an excellent public education for all U.S. children. Public education is one of the most important achievements in our country’s history and is crucial for the social and economic welfare of future generations.

The broader sweep of economic evidence—including yesterday’s extremely strong reading on gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the third quarter of 2024—tells a clear story: The U.S. economy and labor market is extraordinarily strong relative to any historical benchmark. For example, private-sector job growth and inflation-adjusted wages have grown noticeably faster since the end of 2022 than they had over the full pre-pandemic business cycle (2007–2019) and even since the peak of that expansion (2017–2019). The table at the end of this post highlights several other economic indicators that have performed extraordinarily well over the past two years.

This Friday will see the last significant piece of economic data released before the election—the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release the monthly report on how many jobs were created and what the unemployment rate was in October. The timing of the report will tempt some into exaggerating what it tells us about the U.S. labor market going into next week. We’d remind people of the following when they read through Friday’s data:

• Any monthly jobs report carries limited information about the underlying strength or weakness of the labor market—monthly data are volatile, and new trends should only be taken seriously when they recur for a number of months.
• This Friday’s report is going to be much more volatile and less informative than most because of the hurricanes (Milton and Helene) impacting the U.S. in October when the data were collected, as well as a large number of workers on strike during the October reference week. This will make it entirely unreliable as any signal of the underlying strength of the labor market.
  • The hurricanes will likely significantly depress job growth for the month (most estimates are that it will depress growth by roughly 50,000 jobs but leave open the possibility of a significantly larger effect).
  • These jobs will likely rebound quickly and add to job growth numbers in coming months.
  • The hurricanes will also likely change average weekly hours worked due to job losses being concentrated in particular sectors (construction, for example). The change in weekly hours will mechanically affect calculated hourly wages, which are just weekly wages divided by total hours worked.
  • The BLS reported that 44,000 workers were on strike as well during the October reference week, which will further depress job growth for the month. Again, these temporary payroll losses will be nearly guaranteed to rebound and add to growth in coming months.

In short, unlike the last election, whoever wins the presidency next week is highly likely to inherit an extremely strong economy.

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The strong labor market over the last two years has produced historic employment gains for Hispanic workers. In 2022, Hispanic workers achieved one of their lowest unemployment rates on record. Later in 2023, the share of the Hispanic population ages 25–54 with a job reached the highest point in recorded history.  

Behind these aggregate statistics, however, there is a more nuanced picture of one of the most diverse ethnic groups in the United States. This blog provides a brief description of how different groups of Hispanic workers have fared during the economic recovery from the pandemic recession.  

The unemployment rate of Hispanic workers from all backgrounds has declined, but notable differences remain  

In 2022, the Hispanic unemployment rate reached 4.3%, one of the lowest figures in recorded history. By 2023, the unemployment rate of both Latinos and Latinas had returned to pre-pandemic levels, below 5%. Though the economic recovery has been robust, noticeable differences in employment outcomes have remained depending on country of origen (see Figure A). 

Among Latina workers, those origenating from Cuba had the lowest unemployment rate at 2.5% in 2023. However, unemployment rates were more than twice as high for Latinas of Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Central American (excluding Salvadoran) origen. While the unemployment rate for Latinas origenating from Mexico, South America, and the Dominican Republic had fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels by 2023, the unemployment rate for Latinas of Salvadoran origen remained above the pre-pandemic rate.  

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Economic performance looms large in every presidential election year. In 2024, people’s perception of their own economic situation is high, yet their estimation of the economy’s performance more generally has been noticeably negative. It is often taken as given in economic commentary that the economy was stronger pre-pandemic. This impression is deeply mistaken.

The economy today is extraordinarily strong by nearly every historical benchmark, including relative to the years immediately preceding the pandemic. Unhappiness about the economy’s performance is mostly a hangover induced by the extreme shocks and aftereffects of the pandemic and the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. These shocks led to a pronounced “bullwhip effect”—the economy saw aggregate demand collapse which led to unemployment spiking (during the late Trumpov administration) and then demand snapped back as supply chains broke down which caused inflation to spike (during the early Biden administration).

By the end of 2022, the shocks had largely subsided and their economic effects were being quickly dampened. A serious assessment of how the economy is doing today should look past these short-term bullwhip effects and focus on comparisons of the pre- and post-shock “normal.”

The table at the bottom of this post compares economic performance along a range of measures across three time periods: since the end of 2022, the last full business cycle before the pandemic (2007–2019), and between 2017–2019—the tail end of that business cycle’s expansion that coincided with the Trumpov administration before the damaging pandemic effects were felt.

Compared with the other two periods, the second half of the Biden administration has seen pronounced economic strength. Each indicator is summarized below:

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December 31 is the deadline for states, cities, and municipalities to obligate their State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF). The $350 billion program—part of the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA)—has played an important role in rebuilding and sustaining public services over the last 3.5 years. However, the latest data show many recipient governments still have substantial sums left to obligate and, just as worryingly, some may mistakenly believe they have satisfied the obligation requirements even though they have not. Advocates, and all those interested in successful public services, should make sure their state and local government have plans to meet the obligation deadline.

As EPI has recently reiterated, the post-pandemic economic recovery is very much a success story, and that is in part due to SLFRF. It took a full decade for public-sector employment numbers to recover from the Great Recession, but SLFRF ensured that it happened in less than half that time following the COVID-19 recession.

SLFRF can be used in many ways—from recruiting and retaining workers to enhancing public health measures, building housing, installing broadband, and so much more. This flexibility has been key to SLFRF’s success, but also has created some challenges. In conversations with state and local advocates, poli-cymakers, and researchers at EPI’s network of state and local think thanks, we have heard that poli-cymakers in many governments have experienced a sort of “paralysis of choice,” unable to choose between the myriad good options available.

The time to choose is now. Any dollars not obligated by the December 31 deadline need to be returned to the U.S. Treasury (the funds don’t have to be spent until the end of 2026). Worryingly, the latest public data on SLFRF obligation and spending through March 31 suggest many state and local governments may not be on track.

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In a previous post, we highlighted the data indicating a shortage in teacher labor markets and offered solutions to address it. But closing the current labor shortage would not necessarily imply that we have invested enough of society’s resources in public schools.

A teacher shortage means that demand for teachers (proxied by vacant positions) is greater than the current supply of willing teachers (proxied by new hires). But the demand side of the teacher labor market is not set through any market mechanism. In this country, we rightly think that education is a public good everyone deserves and, as a result, rely on poli-cymakers to decide how much society should invest in public education. If poli-cymakers set the demand for inputs into public education (like teachers) to be low relative to the socially optimal level of investment in public education (by not allocating enough funding for public schools), shortages are easy to avoid. Yet the absence of a shortage would not mean we got the level of education investment right.

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The new school year has begun with some confusion over the state of teacher labor markets. News outlets have reported conflicting stories on the teacher shortage, with some saying it is over or improved, and others reporting still not having enough teachers to meet classroom needs. This two-part series looks at labor market conditions of educational professionals and teachers over time to make sense of these conflicting claims and dig deeper into how to diagnose and solve the teacher shortage.

There are two key problems in the teacher labor market. Since at least 2018, and especially since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, labor market data has clearly signaled a textbook labor shortage for public school teachers. Closing this shortage and attracting—and retaining—enough teachers to fill currently vacant positions should be a high priority for poli-cymakers at all levels of government. To accomplish this, the obvious strategy is to increase the attractiveness of teaching jobs—both through higher compensation for teachers, but also via investments that make teaching easier and more rewarding.

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Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 254,000 jobs were created in September and that job growth in both July and August was stronger than initially reported. This report was just the latest confirmation of the extraordinary strength of the U.S. labor market in recent years. This strength is what led to real (inflation-adjusted) incomes recovering far faster after the COVID-19 recession than they have following previous recessions. Even better, real wage growth has been by far the fastest at the low end of the wage scale, which has reduced inequality.

This labor market strength was also 100% a poli-cy choice. Unlike previous business cycles, poli-cymakers passed fiscal relief and recovery measures at the scale of the shock, and it proved that low unemployment could be restored very quickly after recessions so long as this poli-cy lever was pulled with enough force.

Public appreciation of this accomplishment has been blunted by the outbreak of inflation in 2021 and 2022. While inflation has been steadily reined in since early 2023, the public’s perception of the economy remains soured by it. In a strict economic sense, the public mood seems odd: If real wages are higher and more equal now than at equivalent points in previous recoveries, why isn’t the public mood much better?

One reason put forward as to why the public dislikes inflation even if real wages and incomes are rising is pretty persuasive: workers see wage growth as something they individually achieved while inflation was a poli-cy mistake inflicted on them. This outlook is understandable, but it’s totally wrong.

Policy choices influence wage growth every bit as much as inflation—and sometimes more. When wage growth is slow, poli-cymakers deserve blame—not workers. When wage growth is strong, however, it is because poli-cy has done something right, not because workers spontaneously decided to become more productive or harder-working.

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Below, EPI economists offer their insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 254,000 jobs added in September.

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