U.S. labor market dynamics revisited

Eran Yashiv ()

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The picture of U.S. labor 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 labor market, for the study of business cycles, for the explanation of wage behavior, 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 labor 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 labor market dynamics depends upon the closing of these data gaps.

Keywords: labor market dynamics; gross worker flows; job finding; separation; hiring; business cycles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J63 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2007-11
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/19665/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: U.S. Labor Market Dynamics Revisited (2007)
Working Paper: U.S. Labour Market Dynamics Revisited (2007)
Working Paper: U.S. Labor Market Dynamics Revisited (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:19665

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