Are recessions good for government hires? The effect of unemployment on public sector human capital

Congshan Zhang and John M. de Figueiredo

Economics Letters, 2018, vol. 170, issue C, 1-5

Abstract: Utilizing a large dataset on U.S. federal government employees covering 24 years, we estimate and analyze the persistent wage effect of entering government employment during recessions for recent college graduates and other new employees. Contrary to previous results in the literature for private sector employees, we document a significant and long-term wage increase for federal civil servants who enter government service in recessions. We show this result is robust to alternative samples and model specifications. We examine the role of agency occupation composition and job matching as mechanisms for these results.

Keywords: Recession; Wages; Government (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H83 J31 J45 K0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:170:y:2018:i:c:p:1-5

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2018.05.008

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