Labor and human capital

Summary

Long-run labor and human capital analytics drawing on the Hercules and Sisyphus WDI warehouses (78 curated indicators across 195 countries, 1960 to 2025). Built for multilateral institutions, central banks, think tanks, and policy teams needing reproducible cross-country labor diagnostics.

What we do

Labor and human capital work answers questions about persistence, structural change, and cross-country comparison over horizons that demand careful panel discipline. The Hercules warehouse curates 19 World Bank WDI labor and human capital indicators (unemployment by education and gender, labor force participation, school enrollment, literacy, life expectancy, mortality, poverty, GDP per capita PPP). The Sisyphus warehouse adds 59 long-run macro indicators for cross-cutting work.

Engagements include cross-country labor market diagnostics, persistence and shock decomposition (AR(1) half-life, jump detection, YoY z-score shocks), structural change reports, and embedded panel work for institutional research teams. Outputs are reproducible with full collection logs.

Methods

• AR(1) persistence and half-life estimation
• Year-by-year shock decomposition (YoY growth, volatility, z-score shocks)
• Cross-country comparator analysis
• Panel extraction for downstream modeling
• Structural change tests (Bai-Perron, Quandt-Andrews)
• Convergence and beta-convergence analysis
• Education-mediated labor return estimation
• Female labor force participation decomposition

Public data partners

• World Bank WDI (via Sisyphus and Hercules)
• BLS Current Population Survey (US)
• OECD STAN, Productivity Database
• IPUMS International (when accessible)
• ILO ILOSTAT

Deliverables

• Cross-country panel diagnostic with persistence indicators
• Single-country labor market deep read
• Structural change and shock identification memo
• Reproducible panel extract for downstream modeling
• Embedded labor market research bench

Sample engagements

• Cross-country female labor force participation diagnostic across 60 LMICs.
• US labor market structural break analysis post-pandemic.
• Education enrollment persistence decomposition for a regional bank report.
• Labor share decomposition across sectors for a sovereign wealth fund.
• Embedded panel maintenance for a think tank's labor research program.