Women and the Phillips Curve: Do Women’s and Men’s Labor Market Outcomes Differentially Affect Real Wage Growth and Inflation?
During the economic expansion of the 1990s, the United States enjoyed both low
inflation rates and low levels of unemployment. Juhn, Murphy, and Topel (2002) point
out that the low unemployment rates for men in the 1990s were accompanied by
historically high rates of non-employment suggesting that the 1990s economy was not as
strong as the unemployment rate might indicate. We include women in the analysis and
examine whether the Phillips curve relationships between real compensation growth,
changes in inflation, and labor market slackness are the same for men and women and
whether measures of “non-employment” better capture underlying economic activity, as
suggested by Juhn, Murphy, and Topel’s analysis. From 1965 to 2002 the increase in
women’s labor force participation more than offsets the decline for men, and low
unemployment rates in the 1990s were accompanied by historically low overall nonemployment
rates. We find that women’s measures of labor market slackness do as well
as men’s in explaining real compensation growth and changes in inflation after 1983. We
also find some evidence that non-employment rates are more closely related to changes in
inflation than other measures of labor market slackness; however, we do not find the
same for real compensation growth.