The nation's debt level, and who holds our debt.

A new report by the Congressional Budget Office, Average Federal Tax Rates in 2007, shows that the wealthiest 20 percent of households earned 55.9 percent of all income but paid 86 percent of federal income taxes and 68.9 percent of all federal taxes.

The headlines are all about sovereign debt at the moment. But that is only part of the problem. Debt has risen across the economy, from consumers on credit cards, though industrial companies borrowing for expansion and financial companies using debt to buy risky assets.

What events triggered shifts in layoff activity?

The wealth of nations, according to Adam Smith, the founding father of the market economy, is not measured in GDP or cash reserves. Rather, it "consists in the cheapness of provision and all other necessaries and conveniences of life."

A new O.E.C.D. report finds that rich countries and poor countries now each contribute about an equal share of the global economy. And by 2030, developing countries will account for 57 percent of world G.D.P.

Generally speaking, childlessness is rising: More women are opting to forgo motherhood than their predecessors a generation ago.Except for the most educated women.

Here is a tool to both estimate how much government regulation cost U.S. taxpayers between Fiscal Year 1960 and Fiscal Year 2011 and project how much it would be likely to grow into the future.

Are there too many of us?

I estimate that the ‘real’ import penetration of  Chinese-made goods  was roughly 9.7% of non-oil manufacturing in 2008, up from 2.9% in 1999. 

Income mobility is great among high-income earners, who recently have been popular targets of federal and state tax policy proposals. Roughly half of millionaires from 1999 to 2007 were millionaires in just one year in the nine-year time period. By contrast, only 6 percent were millionaires in all nine years, according a new report by the Tax Foundation.

Percentage of borrowers with negative equity (underwater) or who are delinquent in payments:

The federal tax system is progressive--that is, average tax rates generally rise with income. Households in the bottom fifth of the income distribution (with average income of $18,400, under a broad definition of income) paid 4.0 percent of their income in federal taxes. The middle quintile, with average income of $64,500, paid 14.3 percent of that income in taxes, and the highest quintile, with average income of $264,700,... More

Texas’s low-cost, liberty-loving atmosphere has become an attractive alternative to California’s oppressive public sector and dysfunctional policy environment. No amount of heart-melting vistas, celebrity sightings, or traipses through wine country can make up for what almost appears a strategic attempt by one of the nation’s largest states to drive businesses and productive people away.

In considering Barack Obama's address to the nation, in which he stated his desire for individual Americans to transition away from consuming so much oil, we thought we'd revisit and update the data to see if Americans have been or are as wasteful with oil resources as the President would appear to believe.

People often think about innovation in terms of research and development – R&D. Differences between countries are stark when you look at expenditures per capita, according to a study of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Right now there are three depressing aspects to the current course of the U.S. economy.  First, the growth of healthcare spending, if it continues, will put a stranglehold on employers and taxpayers.  Second, the apparent inability of the private sector to generate well-paying jobs for college grads, if it continues, will put a squeeze on young workers.  Third,  the apparently inability of... More

According to this BLSreport released yesterday, state and local governments spent an average of $39.81 per hour in March 2010 to compensate public-sector employees ($26.25 in wages and $13.56 for benefits). Total employer compensation costs for private industry workers averaged $27.73 per hour ($19.58 for wages and $8.15 for benefits),... More

In 2008, about 3,500 teens in the United States aged 15-19 were killed and more than 350,000 were treated in emergency departments for injuries suffered in motor-vehicle crashes.  Young people ages 15-24 represent only 14% of the U.S. population. However, they account for 30% ($19 billion) of the total costs of motor vehicle injuries... More

Unlike other states, when Hawaii raises its cigarette taxes, neither Hawaiian smokers nor smugglers can just hop in their cars and cross state lines to where they might find cheaper cigarettes to buy legally and sneak back into the state. And that means that Hawaii represents a good test case for seeing how cigarette taxes affect the quantity of... More

New jobs data showed a very surprising pattern: Compared to a year ago, the labor market for foreign-born workers appears to have improved. Meanwhile, the labor market for native-born workers appears to have worsened compared to a year ago.

The rising costs of health care will put tremendous pressure on the federal budget during the next few decades and beyond.  In CBO's judgment, the legislation enacted earlier this year does not substantially diminish that pressure.

As a rough estimate, a country’s life expectancy at birth increases by about one additional year for every $1,500 increase in real GDP per capita.

For many reasons, women are paid less than men. One is that many women have jobs with more desirable schedules.

I’ve plotted median usual weekly earnings of fulltime workers, adjusted for inflation, and indexed to 2001Q1 =1. The dark blue line shows the weekly wages of workers with an advanced degree, while the lighter line shows weekly wages of workers with a bachelor’s degree only.

An interactive graphic traces world progress by country on dozens of measures over the last 200 years.