Abstract: To monitor trends in alternative work arrangements, we conducted a version of the Contingent Worker Survey as part of the RAND American Life Panel in late 2015. The findings point to a significant rise in the incidence of alternative work arrangements in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015. The percentage of workers engaged in alternative work arrangements – defined as temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract workers, and independent contractors or freelancers – rose from 10.7 percent in February 2005 to 15.8 percent in late 2015. The percentage of workers hired out through contract companies showed the largest rise, increasing from 1.4 percent in 2005 to 3.1 percent in 2015. Workers who provide services through online intermediaries, such as Uber or Task Rabbit, accounted for 0.5 percent of all workers in 2015. About twice as many workers selling goods or services directly to customers reported finding customers through offline intermediaries than through online intermediaries.

To monitor trends in alternative work arrangements, we conducted a version of the Contingent Worker Survey as part of the RAND American Life Panel in late 2015. The findings point to a significant rise in the incidence of alternative work arrangements in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015. The percentage of workers engaged in alternative work arrangements – defined as temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract workers, and independent contractors or freelancers – rose from 10.7 percent in February 2005 to 15.8 percent in late 2015. The percentage of workers hired out through contract companies showed the largest rise, increasing from 1.4 percent in 2005 to 3.1 percent in 2015. Workers who provide services through online intermediaries, such as Uber or Task Rabbit, accounted for 0.5 percent of all workers in 2015. About twice as many workers selling goods or services directly to customers reported finding customers through offline intermediaries than through online intermediaries.

Several important social science literatures hinge on the functional relationship between
neighborhood characteristics and individual outcomes. Although there have been numerous
non-experimental estimates of these relationships, there are serious concerns about their
reliability because individuals self-select into neighborhoods. This paper uses data from HUD’s
Moving to Opportunity (MTO) randomized housing voucher experiment to estimate the
relationship between neighborhood poverty and individual outcomes using experimental
variation. In addition, it assesses the reliability of non-experimental estimates by comparing
them to experimental estimates.
We find that our method for using experimental variation to estimate the relationship
between neighborhood poverty and individual outcomes – instrumenting for neighborhood
poverty with site-by-treatment group interactions – produces precise estimates in models in
which poverty enters linearly. Our estimates of nonlinear and threshold models are not precise
enough to be conclusive, though many of our point estimates suggest little, if any, deviation from
linearity. Our non-experimental estimates are inconsistent with our experimental estimates,
suggesting that non-experimental estimates are not reliable. Moreover, the selection pattern that
reconciles the experimental and non-experimental results is complex, suggesting that common
assumptions about the direction of bias in non-experimental estimates may be incorrect.

This paper examines the effect of technological change and other factors on the relative demand
for workers with different education levels and on the recent growth of U.S. educational wage
differentials. A simple supply-demand framework is used to interpret changes in the relative quantities,
wages, and wage bill shares of workers by education in the aggregate U.S. labor market in each decade
since 1940 and over the 1990 to 1995 period. The results suggest that the relative demand for college
graduates grew more rapidly on average during the past twenty-five years (1970-95) than during the
previous three decades (1940-70). The increased rate of growth of relative demand for college graduates
beginning in the 1970s did not lead to an increase in the college/high school wage differential until the
1980s because the growth in the supply of college graduates increased even more sharply in the 1970s
before returning to historical levels in the 1980s. The acceleration in demand shifts for more-skilled
workers in the 1970s and 1980s relative to the 1960s is entirely accounted for by an increase in within-
industry changes in skill utilization rather than between-industry employment shifts. Industries with large
increases in the rate of skill upgrading in the 1970s and 1980s versus the 1960s are those with greater
growth in employee computer usage, more computer capital per worker, and larger shares of computer
investment as a share of total investment. The results suggest that the spread of computer technology
may "explain" as much as 30 to 50 percent of the increase in the rate of growth of the relative demand
for more-skilled workers since 1970.

The wage structure in the U.S. public sector responded sluggishly to
substantial changes in private sector wages during the 1970s and 1980s.
Despite a large expansion in the college/high school wage differential during
the 1980s in the private sector, the public sector college wage premium
remained fairly stable. Although wage differentials by skill in the public
sector were fairly unresponsive to changes in the private sector, overall pay
levels for state and local government workers were quite sensitive to local
labor market conditions. But federal government regional pay levels appear
unaffected by local economic conditions. Several possible explanations are
considered to account for the rigidity of the government internal wage
structure, including employer size, unionization, and nonprofit status. None
of these factors adequately explains the pay rigidity we observe in the
government.