And we clearly need to get back to emphasizing the importance of economists “getting their hands dirty” with empirical work. 26. Then there is the crucial aspect of economic history. Much of economic thinking has been handicapped by economists not having a sense of economic history.
There are many more women in the workforce now, but while women used to have higher unemployment rates than men, that is no longer the case. And while younger workers tend to have less stable employment patterns and higher unemployment rates than older workers, the working population is, on net, only a little bit older now than it was in the late 1960s.