Although employment is one of the Fed’s central missions and the current chair, Janet Yellen has a passionate commitment to employment for all willing workers, the shape that unemployment takes in much of the developed world can not be altered by monetary policy although it can perhaps be changed by tax policy.  Writing from Jackson Hole, Daniel Altman looks at some tacts that might help.

The private sector in the United States has been consolidating rather than expanding in the past few decades. The average payroll at an American company is about 50 percent higher now than in 1977, as I have written. In other words, there have been progressively fewer businesses per worker, and those business have gotten much bigger. This hinders innovation too, since bigger organizations tend to have more vertical hierarchies. The more layers in the organization, the tougher it is for new ideas to percolate to the top.

In this environment, low interest rates may not be enough to boost employment. Some firms could find it easier to replace and renew old capital, and new firms may find the cost of raising money more bearable. But stricter lending policies among banks have dulled this effect, stifling the growth of small businesses. Overall, however, the case for hiring in the United States — or, indeed, for any major expansion of their production here — is clearly a difficult one to make for many American companies.   The US Fed is Not Going to Solve the Employment Problem

August 26th is celebrated as Women’s Equality Day in the US,  The not-so-popular President issued a proclamation

“From classrooms to boardrooms, in cities and towns across America, and in the ranks of our Armed Forces, women are succeeding like never before. Their contributions are growing our economy and advancing our Nation. But despite these gains, the dreams of too many mothers and daughters continue to be deferred and denied. There is still more work to do and more doors of opportunity to open. When women receive unequal pay or are denied family leave and workplace flexibility, it makes life harder for our mothers and daughters, and it hurts the loved ones they support. These outdated policies and old ways of thinking deprive us of our Nation’s full talents and potential. That is why this June we held the first-ever White House Summit on Working Families to develop a comprehensive agenda that ensures hard working Americans do not have to choose between being productive employees and responsible family members. We know that when women and girls are free to pursue their own measure of happiness in all aspects of their lives, they strengthen our families, enrich our communities, and better our country. We know that when women succeed, America succeeds.”

It is the hope of the founders of W-T-W.org, women and finance, that knowledge and interconnected networks across the world makes a small contribution to women as they step out into the world and take their deserved places.

Women get paid less than men in almost all jobs, but when women in low-wage jobs need to take time off work to care for children, they are at an even greater disadvantage.

If all employees got paid the same hourly amount (assuming they’re equally productive on the job), it would go a long way toward closing the gender pay gap, according to Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economist who has analyzed income data across occupations, including a new set of unpublished data on hourly workers that she prepared for the White House Summit on Working Families in June.

Instead, she has found, people in professions like law and finance get paid disproportionately more when they work extra-long hours. At the other end of the spectrum, people in low-wage jobs do not benefit much from working more, but get paid disproportionately less per hour when they work fewer than 40 hours a week. The penalty is similar for men and women — but ends up hurting women more, because they are far more likely to take breaks during their careers or need shorter or predictable hours to handle child care.

Working fewer hours in low-paying jobs, Ms. Goldin said, “can get even nastier, because of the problem that flexibility here is not just the number of hours but whether you even know which hours you’re going to be working.”

While the challenges are different at high-income and low-income jobs, the bottom line is the same: Employees, particularly parents, need some measure of predictability and control over the hours they work; the workplace could be much more equal if they weren’t penalized for not working a straight 40-hour workweek.

Working-class women are much more likely than high-wage ones to leave work altogether when their children are infants and toddlers, according to Ms. Goldin. That is in part because the United States does not mandate paid maternity leave or subsidized child care, so many women cannot afford to keep a job while their children are young.

Once women return to work, they get paid less than men still on the job because they have lost skills during their time off and because they tend to work less than full time. As a result, they are more likely than men to work in hourly jobs instead of higher-paying salary and supervisory ones, and get paid less even for the hours they work.

The problems affect not just parents but also students, people with more than one job and those with other caretaking responsibilities, like for elderly parents. With the rise in part-time workers who want to work full-time and scheduling software that forces workers to be on call all the time, getting a reasonable schedule is even harder.

Women earn less than men in low–wage jobs. They are further penalized for working fewer than 40 hours a week, which they do more often than men in order to take care of children.

Using federal data that includes hourly earnings, Ms. Goldin analyzed eight broad occupation categories that pay near minimum wage, including food preparation, clerical work and service jobs like health aide or housekeeper. Women in the operators occupation, like sewing machine operators or bus drivers, are worst off, earning about 83 cents for every dollar men earn after controlling for hours worked, while female office assistants earn about 96 cents on the dollar, according to her data. While the majority of people in these jobs work 40 hours a week, 32 percent of women and 10.5 percent of men work fewer than 40 hours. That is where the additional pay disparities come in.  The reasons employers pay people who work shorter hours disproportionately less is not entirely clear, Ms. Goldin said, but part of it could be to cover fixed costs like benefits, training and office space for people who aren’t there all the time.

Mark Whitehouse writes:  Governments and central banks may have to consider much more aggressive policies to improve the economy’s growth potential and resilience. As sketched out in a new e-book from the Central for Economic Policy Research and elsewhere, these could include investing more in infrastructure and education, raising inflation targets and placing limits on borrowing by requiring more equity in everything from homes to banks.  Lawrence Summers- Secular Stagnation

Lilly Ledbetter had worked at Goodyear for years before someone slipped her a note telling her that she was making a lot less money than other men at her seniority level. Others might learn it through gossip, or through a stray pay stub.

Working women all over the US have had their own equal pay awakenings, when they realized their salaries lagged those of others who had the same qualifications. The knowledge can be a shock.

One thing is clear, however: most American women are still not getting paid as much as their male colleagues.

“Women against feminism” – a viral social media campaign that sprang up this month – isn’t purely an American phenomenon.   Juliette, 45, insisted that she too was “sick of being made out to be a victim simply because I am a woman. I chose to have children and be their primary carer. I am not underpaid or a victim.”

Yet her annual pay is £5,000, or $8,473, less than that of the men in her office. Her explanation? It is not discrimination, just an effect of her having a child and needing flexible hours. “It is not a criticism of my abilities and I do not think all women are discriminated against,” she wrote.

The truth, unfortunately, is that women have been and still are paid less even if they do not take time off to have a child or need flexible hours. They earn, on average, about 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.  In span of a year, they make $11,500 less than their male counterparts.

Being underpaid doesn’t automatically make you a victim. It’s an alert to stop being one. Most women who have discovered unequal pay have stood up for themselves, paving way for other women in their company. Some quit to prove that they deserve to be treated the same as their male co-workers. We all know the statistic that about 57% of men ask for their raises. For women, that number was 7%.

Yet women who do raise the subject of salary find that asking is not enough. Often times, they are told to take it or leave it. Frequently, even when given raises, their new pay still comes short of that of their male coworkers.

While that might be enough to discourage some from trying, women have to keep asking for raises and for higher pay. Why? Because men don’t hesitate to ask.  Unequal pay

Equal Pay?

Jobs gained during the economic recovery from the Great Recession pay an average 23% less than the jobs lost during the recession according to a new report released today by The U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) under the leadership of President Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. The annual wage in sectors where jobs were lost during the downturn was $61,637, but new jobs gained through the second quarter of 2014 showed average wages of only $47,171. This wage gap represents $93 billion in lost wages.  US Conference of Mayors Press Release