Of Significance

New Federal Reserve data on un- and underemployment raises questions about whether too many people are getting degrees they don’t need for the jobs they can get, so Steve, Nathan, and Brent are here to dig into the data and figure out whether this is a crisis in over-education or if everyone is reading the data wrong.

A new class of lower-cost alternatives to brand name drugs has emerged: biosimilars. With the development of new technology, we have new complications for antitrust litigation and to explore these issues and more Nathan, Steve, and Brent are joined by antitrust expert Catia Twal.

With the firing of the BLS commissioner in 2025 and continued issues with collecting macro data, a new NBER working paper “The Value of Reliable Statistics” by Bloom et al. tries to examine the importance of quality official statistics. And if someone is doing calculations, Steve, Nathan, and Brent are on it! In this episode they dig into the methodology and meaning of the paper and  have some sug...

Nathan, Brent, and Steve are joined by Connor Moynihan to talk about the proposed changes to federal student loan caps for graduate education. Will this slow rising education costs? Will this deter necessary higher education? Which types of education will see caps and why? This is everything you need to know and more!

Employers are rolling out Large Language Models to take over their traditional hiring practices and this is creating opportunities for litigation up and down the hiring pipeline. To talk about this and other issues surrounding AI's use in hiring, Nathan, Steve, and Brent are joined by Allan G. King for his expert legal analysis.

The Department of Labor is proposing yet another rule change to classification of independent contractors and so Brent, Nathan, and Steve are here to make sense of what the criteria was, is, and will potentially be in this episode that’s all about economic independence and what work makes you an employee.

Inflation hits hard, but it can be tough to tell how hard because of how it’s measured, in this episode Brent, Steve, and Nathan talk about the problems when it comes to thinking about inflation and whether it can even be measured.

With the expansion of Large Language Models, Nathan, Steve, and Brent decided to take some time to look at how different jobs and career paths could be affected. Are we heading for a major crisis or is it overstated? The Of Significance team breaks it all down!

Nathan, Brent, and Steve talk about the prevailing wage, how it’s calculated, and why the statistics around it can dramatically change incentives and behavior. Brent finds a new way to rank himself.

This is the final episode in a series on Sports Statistics where Nathan, Steve, and Brent explore the mathematical thinking deployed by professional sports teams. In this episode, they look at point scoring strategies in basketball and baseball to understand whether people respond to new data or if some strategies are simply suboptimal.

This is the second episode in a series on Sports Statistics where Nathan, Steve, and Brent explore the mathematical thinking deployed by professional sports teams. In this episode, they are once again joined by Sush Jain to explore the concept of momentum: how well is a team doing and how well will they keep doing before things turn around?

This is the first episode in a series on Sports Statistics where Nathan, Steve, and Brent explore the mathematical thinking deployed by professional sports teams. In this episode, they are joined by Sush Jain to finally figure out if the famous Hot Hand is a statistical reality or a mathematical myth.

The European Union is requiring companies to report on pay differences for equally valued work within member states and it means companies need to start doing these analyses before it’s too late. To talk about the complexity of the new mandate and the ways these pay analyses are different from a US context, Nathan, Brent, and Steve are joined by Chris Jones of Paul Hastings. They’re going across t...

Nathan, Brent, and Steve wish the Stat Pack a happy holiday by going through Spotify Wrapped's calculation techniques and share some of their own data and Spotify ages.

It’s been a big year for Supreme Court cases, and in the Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services decision the Court reviewed the standards required in evaluating evidence of discrimination. Nathan, Brent, and Steve are on the case (metaphorically) as they talk through how, in light of the decision, things are going to change and how they’ll stay the same when it comes to pay equity analyses.

It's simple: celebrate with people you love! Steve, Nathan, and Brent have a Thanksgiving message for the whole Stat Pack!

Steve, Nathan, and Brent take a look at lost earnings in light of the Skaggs’ wrongful death litigation and talk about the considerations that have to be made when accounting for the but-for world.

Halloween is here, but are the job opportunities for recent graduates? Brent, Nathan, and Steve enter a veritable haunted house of data to make sense of Federal Reserve unemployment and underemployment numbers to see if there are true terrors or if bad assumptions need unmasking.

Federal law enforcement is in Washington, DC and with the city’s stats under the magnifying glass, Brent, Nathan, and Steve thought they should look into the numbers and see if they can keep their stories straight. How has crime changed in the city? How would we know if numbers were misreported? What will happen to crime rates when the federal troops leave? The Stat Pack tries to tackle all of thi...

New numbers mean new analyses and Brent, Nathan, and Steve are here to talk about the Bureau of Labor Statistics major update this month. It’s as close to breaking news as they get with a dissection of how to think about these statistics, what the data is hiding, and the challenges the BLS will face going forward.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) drew a great deal of attention in August with jobs number revisions for May and June far below the projected job growth. Additionally, with cuts to their consumer price data collection, Nathan, Brent, and Steve thought it would be worth the time to explore how these numbers are collected, the problems people will make in interpreting them, and whether there’s c...

With the US getting ready to co-host the World Cup in 2026, Nathan, Steve, and Brent kick around some of the economic issues surrounding the World Cup and the countries that host it. But their roster isn’t complete without anti-trust expert (and soccer fan!) Sophie Meadows. This episode is all about accounting for the things that are hard to account for and Steve tries to determine the value of ha...

With the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed, Nathan, Steve, and Brent look under the hood on one of the most discussed provisions relating to hourly workers: No Tax on Overtime. They talk about how workers and employers might respond to the new incentives, where the gains will go, and the potential risks employers will face as they look to optimize their employment practices given the benefits of t...

When multinational companies move products within their organization and across borders, the value of production has to be considered for tax purposes. This might be fairly straightforward for a tangible good, but with intangibles? Well, that gets more complicated. So to investigate all of this, Brent and Steve talk with transfer pricing and anti-trust expert Dr. George Korenko about what matters...

Tulsa, OK was one of the first cities to implement a program where they offer remote workers money to relocate to the city for a year in the hopes they can convince people to stick around longer and create economic growth. Thankfully, someone wrote a paper analyzing the impact of this policy so Steve, Nathan, and Brent decide to dig in and sensitivity test the assumptions of the paper, understand...