Racial Differences in Time at Work Not Working

Racial differences in effort at work, if they exist, can potentially explain race-based wage/earnings disparities in the labor market. The authors estimate specifications of time spent on non-work activities at work by Black and White males and females with data from the American Time Use Survey. Estimates reveal that trivially small differences occur between non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White males in time spent not working while on the job that disappear entirely when correcting for non-response errors. The findings imply that Black–White male differences in the fraction of the workday spent not working are either not large enough to partially explain the Black–White wage gap, or simply do not exist at all.

The Local Labor Market Impacts of US Megafires

As we learn to sustainably coexist with wildfire, there is an urgent need to improve our understanding of its multidimensional impacts on society. To this end, we undertake a nationwide study to estimate how megafires (wildfires > 100,000 acres in size) affect US labor market outcomes in communities located within the flame zone. Both year-of-fire and over-time dynamic impacts are studied between 2010−2017. We find that counties located within a megafire flame zone experience significantly lower per capita wage earnings across multiple sources of earnings data for up to two years after megafire event occurrence. We find preliminary evidence that impacts are nonlinear over megafire size. These results highlight a new dimension of megafire impacts and expand the scope of the potential costs of megafires that should be considered in benefit-cost analyses of wildfire control and suppression decisions, especially along sustainability dimensions.