Forensic Economics Blog

When an employer hires an employee, salary or hourly wages are often only a portion of the employee’s total compensation package. The rest of the compensation package usually includes additional forms of compensation known as fringe benefits or employee benefits....

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about unprecedented challenges for the global workforce, leading to a rise in employment discrimination and wrongful termination examples across the country. Given the unprecedented nature of the COVID pandemic, these cases present...

As an attorney, having accurate work-life expectancy estimates is crucial for litigation and settlement purposes. It is one of the central figures required to calculate lifetime earnings, earning capacity, and damage totals in many legal cases. This article aims to...

Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral fiber used for insulation and fireproofing across various industries until the late 1980s. When a person inhales airborne asbestos fibers, they can become lodged in the lungs, which can lead to a variety of health problems....

Household services loss calculations are essential to any personal injury case or wrongful death claim. When an injured or deceased party can no longer contribute to regular household production, they or their family have the right to seek compensation for the cost of...

When a person is subject to unwanted sexual contact or behavior without explicit consent, they may have grounds for a sexual assault claim. While a district attorney can bring criminal charges against the defendant, sexual assault survivors often pursued their claim...

When a doctor diagnoses a medical condition, illness, or injury late and it worsens the condition or causes death, the patient or their family may file a delayed diagnosis medical malpractice claim. However, a diagnostic error in and of itself is not sufficient ground...

Car accidents are the most common cause of personal injury claims in the United States by a significant margin. Nationwide, there are an average of six million car accidents, causing around three million injuries, two million resulting in permanent injuries, and more...

When an employer punishes an employee for asserting their rights against employment discrimination by participating in protected activities defined by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the employee may have grounds for a retaliation complaint. If the...

When an employee claims to be the victim of workplace discrimination, they may seek economic, non-economic, and punitive damages to compensate them for the financial losses and emotional distress they claim to have suffered due to discrimination. Calculating these...

When an employee is subject to unwanted sexual advances, comments, actions, or remarks about their gender or sexual orientation at work, they may have a claim for sexual harassment. The subjective nature of sexual harassment claims often makes them unique and...

A premises liability case, or slip and fall case, is a common type of personal injury claim in which an individual falls and sustains injuries on someone else’s property. Damages incurred from slip and fall accidents can range from minor to severe, depending on the...

When an employee experiences a workplace injury or illness, they are entitled to file an injury claim with their employer’s workers’ compensation insurance provider. However, when the employee is unsatisfied with the settlement offered or chooses to forgo a workers’...

Loss of earning capacity is a common damage included in a personal injury claim involving severe injury. If an injury affects the claimant's future career advancement, they may seek loss of earning capacity damages. Due to the speculative nature of a lost earning...

Determining an individual’s lifetime earnings is a complex yet essential task required in various legal cases, including wrongful death lawsuits, accident settlements, medical malpractice claims, and more. An individual’s lifetime earnings depend on various factors,...

One of the primary damages pursued in business litigation cases is lost profits damages. To recover these damages, the plaintiff must demonstrate how the defendant's actions directly caused those losses. Then, with causation proven, those damages must be quantified...

Lost wages are a key component in determining the value of any lawsuit causing lost compensation such as a personal injury case. A range of variables must be considered when calculating lost wages. These variables create complex situations often requiring the help of...

Medical malpractice occurs when a medical professional (or facility) causes preventable patient injury. Such deviations from clinical protocol have irreversible consequences, often including wrongful death cases. Once a victim begins the legal process, their primary...

What is an Expert Witness? An expert witness is someone who has a particular skill set, knowledge, and proficiency in a specific field that allows them to testify at a deposition or in a court of law. Their opinions are held in high regard and in many cases can help...

Calculating a wrongful termination settlement can be incredibly complex. If you feel that you have been wrongfully terminated, or if you felt that you had to leave a position of employment that you felt was hazardous or hostile, you have the legal right to pursue...

The Money The federal government has thrown trillions of taxpayer dollars at economic relief efforts in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The unprecedented size of this financial investment, combined with the puzzling way it was distributed to Americans, may have...

The bottleneck in the global supply chain is real, and without adequate vaccine availability inflation is rising.

Everyone has become worried over price inflation, and understandably so. Kelly Blue Book revealed that retail prices for mid-size family cars increased over 7% this year, and full-size SUVs increased by over 12%. Realtor.com reported that the price of the average American home increased by 15% this year. The near-term buying power of our salaries is fading fast.

President Biden just introduced his $6 trillion budget for 2022, which is a 33% increase over the $4.4 trillion pre-COVID budget of 2019. To put this into perspective, only two countries in the entire world (the U.S. and China) have an annual GDP higher than $6 trillion.

What will this $6 trillion federal budget buy the typical American family?

The latest trillion-dollar federal economic stimulus package is having a positive, short-term impact on the economy. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) recently reported that in the last month alone, personal income in the U.S. economy has risen by more than $4 trillion. This represents a 21% increase that exceeded even the most optimistic of economic projections. It appears that giving a $1,400 stimulus check to nearly every American who filed a federal income tax form last year is seriously boosting consumer demand.

The Wall Street Journal reported how a restaurant owner resorted to offering employees a $1,000 bonus for staying on for three consecutive months. The Business Insider reported how a McDonald’s restaurant, which pays a few dollars an hour higher than the local minimum wage, was offering people $50 just to show up for a job interview. He failed to attract many applicants.

The sheer magnitude of recent federal efforts to stimulate the American economy over the past year is difficult to fathom, but the potential for their unwanted side effects is easier to grasp.

President Trump signed the CARES Act in March of 2020, adding $1.9 trillion of COVID-related assistance to the existing federal budget. He also signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act in January of 2021, adding another $900 billion in aid. When President Biden recently signed the American Rescue Plan in March of 2021, he added $1.9 trillion more in assistance.

As remote work becomes the new normal, employees are relocating their residences beyond the suburbs of metropolitan business centers—even to an entirely different state. Often, they are making lemonade from the lemons of the Covid crisis, seeking to fulfill personal goals or accommodate the needs of family members. They are pursuing a happier work-life balance that retains their salary and (most) of their company benefits. But is this effort sustainable?

Big City, Small Dreams

When the economic environment of a major metropolitan city changes, its residents will respond—with their feet. Higher apartment rents and worsening crime rates can chase away residents. Higher taxes and more burdensome regulations can chase away jobs.

The transfer of Oracle headquarters from San Francisco, CA to Austin, TX is but one example. The pending move of Hewlett-Packard from Palo Alto, CA to a suburb of Houston, TX is another. And don’t forget Tesla is relocating factories from Fremont, CA to Austin, TX.

One concept they teach in every university economics class is that life is full of trade-offs: every decision you make will have both positive and negative consequences—otherwise, there wouldn’t actually be a decision that needs making. Put another way, there is no such thing as a free lunch.