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OK, time for a game!
These charts show employment for a selection of detailed industries (4-digit NAICS) vs their prepandemic (2012-2019) trend. Which ones, if any, seem to show the effect of AI? (Chat GPT launch shown for reference.)
I'll post a version with industry labels in a bit.
#EconSky

As a consumer, it’s actually awesome when great minds come independently to similar conclusions :)

Cc @bhashmazumder.bsky.social

Interesting! Seems largely consistent with this very related paper, if I understand correctly? papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Unpopular opinion alert: Chuck Schumer deserves credit for keeping his caucus in line until Republicans folded.

Congrats!!

That came across as a dig at gentrification but it was actually an expression of cynicism about NIMBYism in affluent areas

As long as it’s gentrifying other neighborhoods and not messing with ours?

My Only Prayer We sat shiva when my mom died.

I don't know how to speak about being Jewish right now. michaelianblack.substack.com/p/my-only-pr...

Some personal news: This is my last week at The Washington Post.

I’ve loved so much of the last 9 years here, but my faith in the paper’s current leadership is broken beyond repair.

Incredibly excited to get to work w/ the newsroom below (I start in June)

Get in touch on Signal : 9178872891

WaPo Deputy Opinion Editor is just straight up lying about Mamdani's estate tax proposal (in both tweets and an op-ed).

The bill contains a $1.75 million primary residence exemption, exempts retirement accounts, and the 50% marginal rate doesn’t kick in until $30 million.

Tweet from the Prime Minister of Israel: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Antisemitism knows no limits or boundaries. Israel is attacked because it is the Jewish state. Temple Israel in Detroit was attacked today because it is a Jewish house of worship."

Speaking as a Jew living in Diaspora, who needs to exist as a minority at a time of rising antisemitism, I would really appreciate it if the Prime Minister of a country where I do not live would not say that attacks on a sovereign country are analogous to attacks on a synagogue.

Some are indeed doing that now, I believe.

Thanks! I’d caution that those are error bounds measuring statistical uncertainty over the mean estimates, not estimates of distributional effects.

Why: Depends who you ask. Some suspect apps want drivers to oppose the new laws. Apps say they don’t want customers to feel pressured to pay higher fees and more tips.

The subtext is that apps took it for granted (and try to encourage) ppl will 5-10 dollars when setting pay before

Delivery Apps Have Caused $550M In Pay Loss for Workers By Changing How Customers Tip: Mamdani Admin. Report - Streetsblog New York City Uber and DoorDash have cost workers half a million dollars in lost tips, the Mamdani administration charged.

I don’t think drives our main results but there is definitely a follow up paper to be written just about the tip shenanigans and the NY ban on such shenanigans

nyc.streetsblog.org/2026/01/13/d...

Cool paper and highlights the trade-offs often involved in policy, especially with new employment relationships like in the gig economy. As the author says, the way to actually increase pay for workers is to have barriers to entry (1/4)

Of course, barriers to entry also undermine the flexibility benefits of gig work for workers who need ways to earn extra cash at key moments. Our findings suggest that there is no easy win-win with minimum pay regulations.
13/13

Raising pay is possible but probably requires imposing some kind of barrier to entry—remember how the taxi sector used to use medallions and other licensing requirements to ensure high driver pay rates?
12/

⚠️ The punch line: With free entry into gig markets, it is *very* hard to raise anyone's earnings with per-task pay regulation.
11/

➡️ Since there are minimal barriers to entry, any increase in earnings opportunities leads the supply of drivers to rise until the longer queue times roughly offset the benefits of higher pay per delivery.
10/

➡️ So when higher pay per delivery attracts new drivers to gig work, as customer demand falls due to higher prices, *all* drivers face longer queues for deliveries.
9/

➡️ In gig markets, unlike "standard" labor markets, there is no distinction between people who are employed and unemployed: *everyone* looking for work queues for delivery tasks, which get distributed across the whole group.
8/

These results suggest that gig markets differ from standard labor markets in key ways, that create unique challenges for pay regulation. Namely:
7/

2️⃣ Tip income, which accounts for the *majority* of delivery driver pay and is not covered by pay standards, went down. Some of that was organic as customers faced higher delivery fees, but some was accelerated by apps disabling tipping at checkout in Seattle after the reform.
6/

1️⃣ Drivers were completing fewer trips per day, even though they seem to be spending the same amount of time on the apps. It looks like drivers have to endure more time and distance off the clock to find tasks to do.
5/

We clearly see that base pay per delivery unambiguously rose after the reform. But two other things also happened:
4/