Research

How do minimum wage changes affect workplace amenities? Using the universe of claims from California, the US’ largest workers’ compensation system, over 2000-2019, we exploit geographic variation in state- and city-level minimum wages and local occupation-level variation in exposure to minimum wage changes to estimate whether minimum wage increases affect the rate of workplace injuries. We find a large adverse effect of raising minimum wages on injuries. A 10% increase in the minimum wage increases the injury rate by 7.2% in an occupation-metro area labor market which is fully exposed to the minimum wage increase. Our results imply an elasticity of workplace injury rates to minimum-wage-induced wage changes of 2.2. We find particularly large effects on injuries relating to cumulative physical strain, suggesting that employers may respond to minimum wage increases by intensifying the pace of work, which in turn increases injury risk. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the increase in injury risk offsets 19% of the welfare improvement workers see as a result of higher wages.

This paper examines how declining migration opportunities to the United States affect local labor markets in Mexico. Using novel micro-level data from consular identification cards and deportations, we link individuals’ Mexican municipalities of origin to their U.S. destination states. We implement a shift-share design based on historical migration networks and exploit regional variation in exposure to changes in U.S. migration flows between 2017 and 2022 to identify the local labor market effects of reduced emigration while controlling for involuntary repatriations. While we find no impact on overall employment rates, regions more exposed to the decline in migration experience an increase in the share of formal employment and lower formal private-sector wages. These results suggest that reduced migration opportunities expand the labor supply in the formal sector, putting downward pressure on pay.

Women’s employment remains highly sensitive to childcare constraints, making childcare availability a critical lever for supporting mothers’ labor force attachment. We study the effects of expanded full-day programming in Head Start, using the 2016 federal funding initiative that targeted grantees with low full-day enrollment. Linking administrative program data, geo-coded center locations, and household data on employment, we estimate a difference-in-differences design by comparing mothers of young children in treated and untreated areas. The policy increased full-day enrollment by 19 percent and raised single mothers’ employment (1.9%), hours (2.5%), and earnings (6.5%). Results show that extending program duration meaningfully improves maternal labor market outcomes.

We estimate the effect of the Mexican drug war on Mexico-to-U.S. migration and the resulting effects on population, employment, and wages in U.S. labor markets. Our empirical strategy compares U.S. counties differentially connected to Mexican municipalities through historical migration networks, using drug violence triggered by close municipal elections in 2007–2008 as a source of exogenous variation. Over the following decade, migrants fleeing the violence—the vast majority of whom are undocumented—cause native-born U.S. workers’ employment rates to increase and unemployment rates to fall, while wages do not change. Employment gains are largest for natives without a college degree. Employment effects fade after a decade.