Amanda Augustine

If you were pressed to name the skills that are earning a premium in today's job market, you'd likely list software-coding or data analysis. You wouldn't be wrong. But we've found that skills like cognitive and social intelligence, entrepreneurial and leadership skills, the ability to adapt and innovate — skills that can't be automated, in other words, at least not yet — are also earning a premium. And that is good news for low-skilled workers who may be fearful for their futures in a world of unrelenting technological change and globalization.

Alarming numbers of both men and women of prime working age (25-54 years old) have been exiting the labor force. There were 4.3 million more prime-age working people who opted out of the workforce in 2016 compared to 2000. The number of males age 25-54 not in the labor force has been increasing since the late 1970s, but the same couldn’t be said of females until 2000. What is behind this historic break in the female labor force trend? To properly analyze the female labor force, it needs to be separated into different cohorts — married vs. unmarried, with children vs. without — since each of these groups exhibits different employment patterns and wage change.

Wind has garnered a reputation for being not only an environmentally-friendly, but also a wallet-friendly alternative to produce electricity at a utility-scale level. This is in sharp contrast to the U.S. debut of large wind farms in 1980, which were primarily in response to environmental concerns and emissions reductions standards. Moreover, estimates on the cost of producing electricity with wind energy have been trending downward, making wind energy competitive with conventional energy sources, even after taking into account both government incentives and the historically low prices of natural gas and  coal.

Do you remember when oil prices fell below $30 per barrel? Back in February, markets couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel as prices hit their lowest level since December 2013. But in a gravity defying twist, prices rebounded to $52 per barrel in early June and have stabilized at an average of $50 per barrel since then.