August 2026
Author(s): Thomas Dee, Chloe R. Gibbs, Rebecca Margolit-Chan, Lillian Morrell, and James X. Sullivan
Timely high school completion is a critical step in successful transitions to post-secondary schooling and the labor market. This randomized controlled trial, deployed in two urban, disadvantaged school districts, tests the effectiveness of a mature and comprehensive student-support program on an unusually large scale (n=2,528). While overall effects on graduation rates are small and statistically insignificant, exploratory analyses reveal notable variation by site and over time, mirroring heterogeneity in treatment timing and program implementation. These findings highlight the challenges of scaling interventions and raise concerns about generalizing results from small-scale, single-site evaluations.
July 2026
Author(s): Harley Frazis
Working from home has remained a prominent part of the labor market after the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in January 2025 President Trump issued an executive order restricting the use of work from home (WFH) in the federal government. This paper examines trends in WFH by class of worker: private for-profit, private not-for-profit, federal, state, and local government. It evaluates how WFH evolved across different classes after accounting for differences in occupation and education, with a focus on trends for WFH in the federal government, relative to the for-profit class, before and after the restriction in federal WFH. Overall, “hybrid” WFH—working from home for part of work hours—increased from late 2022 to early 2026. For local government workers, and federal government workers after the executive order, WFH rates are below those of for-profit workers.
July 2026
Author(s): Brad Hershbein, Katherine Lim, Douglas Webber, and Mike Zabek
Using novel data from the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, we examine how labor market tightness affects workers’ job quality. We estimate that a 10 percent increase in job vacancies not only increases the probability of changing jobs, it yields an 11–18 percent increase in the (unconditional) probability of switching to a better job overall, and one with greater pay and benefits, interest in the work, and advancement opportunities. Because tight labor markets improve both worker pay and job amenities in roughly the same proportion, their benefits to workers are underestimated when based on pay alone.
June 2026
Author(s): Gabrielle Pepin, Jonathan Borowsky, Elizabeth E. Davis, and Aaron Sojourner
Parents often cite location and convenience as important factors in choosing a child care provider. We use data on individual mobility from GPS in cell phones to study commutes to each licensed early childhood care and education (ECE) provider in 14 states separately for center customers, center workers, and customers of home-based child care providers. We document five key facts about ECE customer and worker commutes. One, center customers and workers commute farther than home-based customers to ECE providers. Two, substantial shares of customers and workers commute 10+ miles to their ECE provider. Three, commute distances to ECE providers vary substantially across geographic regions. Four, commute distances, especially for center workers, increase with provider neighborhood socioeconomic status. Five, commute distances vary by the racial and ethnic composition of the provider location, even after controlling for measures of socioeconomic status. Results suggest variation in ECE market size by provider type, geographic location, and workforce characteristics, which has implications for policies intended to increase supply within the sector. Higher-income customers may lift child care prices and wages across a broader region than where they shop, impacting access in less privileged regions. Interventions targeting child care wages may have geographical spillovers outside of child care markets defined by consumer behavior.
