Employer-to-Employer Flows in the United States: Estimates Using Linked Employer-Employee Data

Melissa Bjelland, Bruce Fallick, John Haltiwanger and Erika McEntarfer

No 13867, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We use administrative data linking workers and firms to study employer-to-employer flows. After discussing how to identify such flows in quarterly data, we investigate their basic empirical patterns. We find that the pace of employer-to-employer flows is high, representing about 4 percent of employment and 30 percent of separations each quarter. The pace of employer-to-employer flows is highly procyclical, and varies systematically across worker, job and employer characteristics. Our findings regarding job tenure and earnings dynamics suggest that for those workers moving directly to new jobs, the new jobs are generally better jobs; however, this pattern is highly procyclical. There are rich patterns in terms of origin and destination of industries. We find somewhat surprisingly that more than half of the workers making employer-to-employer transitions switch even broadly-defined industries (NAICS super-sectors).

JEL-codes: E24 J62 J63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-lab and nep-mac
Date: 2008-03
Note: EFG LS
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13867.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Working Paper: Employer-to-employer flows in the United States: estimates using linked employer-employee data (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13867

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13867
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().