Job-Lock: An Impediment to Labor Mobility? Is Health Insurance Crippling the Labor Market?

Douglas Holtz-Eakin

Economics Public Policy Brief Archive from Levy Economics Institute

Abstract: Recent survey results and anecdotal evidence appear to indicate that workers sometimes sacrifice job opportunities by remaining in their current position in order to retain health benefits. If "job-lock" is real, the nation pays an economic price in terms of a misallocation of workersamong productive opportunities, higher relocation and training costs for workers who have stayed too long in their jobs, and the loss of innovation, employment, and competition associated with start-up ventures. Holtz-Eakin suggests that the incidence of job-lock may be overstated. Therefore, reform programs proposing to dismantle the current system of employer-provided insurance in order to improve labor mobility are misguided. Rather, policy should aim to improve access to health care, improve the efficiency of insurance operations, and guarantee the portability of insurance coverage and premium expenses.

New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/ppb10.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/ppb10.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://levyweb.bard.edu/pubs/ppb10.pdf)

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lev:levppb:10

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Public Policy Brief Archive from Levy Economics Institute
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Elizabeth Dunn ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).