U.S. Labour Market Dynamics Revisited

Eran Yashiv ()

No 6481, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The picture of U.S. labour market dynamics is opaque. Empirical studies have yielded contradictory findings and debates have emerged regarding their implications. This paper aims at clarifying the picture, which is important for the understanding of the operation of the labour market, for the study of business cycles, for the explanation of wage behaviour, and for the formulation of policy. The paper determines what facts can be established, what are their implications, and what remains to be further investigated. The main contributions made here are: (i) Listing of data facts that can be agreed upon. These indicate that there is considerable cyclicality and volatility of both accessions to employment and separations from it. Hence, both are important for the understanding of the business cycle. (ii) Presenting the business cycle facts of key series. (iii) Pointing to specific gaps in the data picture: disparities in the measurement of the sizeable flows between employment and the pool of workers out of the labour force, disagreements about the relative volatility of job finding and separation rates across data sets, and the fact that the fit of the gross flows data with net employment growth data differs across studies and is not high. The definite characterization of labour market dynamics depends upon the closing of these data gaps.

Keywords: Business cycles; Gross worker flows; Hiring; Job finding; Labour market dynamics; Separation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J63 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-lab and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP6481 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: U.S. Labor Market Dynamics Revisited (2007)
Working Paper: U.S. labor market dynamics revisited (2007)
Working Paper: U.S. Labor Market Dynamics Revisited (2006)
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:cpr:ceprdp:6481

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP6481

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().