Daniel S. Hamermesh - U.S. labor market

Country labor market predictions: Daniel S. Hamermesh on the U.S. labor market.


So the issue is, what’s in the next year in the United States, what our problem is? The United States is at more than full employment. To me, the biggest labor market problem is not a next year problem but it’s a long term problem that we work more than anybody else in any other rich country.

You in England, and Europe, have four or five weeks of paid holiday, we have no mandatory paid holiday and the average American gets two weeks. We work longer, we work more at nights, we work more at weekends, and this kind of madness, in what is one of the richest countries in the world, is to me a longer term labor market problem that I hope we can address.