The Inexorable Recoveries of U.S. Unemployment

Robert E. Hall and Marianna Kudlyak

No 2021-20, Working Paper Series from Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Abstract: Unemployment recoveries in the US have been inexorable. Between 1949 and 2019, the annual reduction in the unemployment rate during cyclical recoveries was tightly distributed around 0.1 log points per year. The economy seems to have an irresistible force toward restoring full employment. Unless another crisis intervenes, unemployment continues to glide down to a level of approximately 3.5 percentage points. Occasionally unemployment rises rapidly during an economic crisis, while most the time, unemployment declines slowly and smoothly at a near-constant proportional rate. We show that similar properties hold for other measures of the US unemployment rate and for the unemployment rates of six other advanced countries.

Keywords: Business cycle; Recovery; Unemployment; Recession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 J63 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17
Date: 2021-08-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-isf and nep-mac
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Related works:
Journal Article: The inexorable recoveries of unemployment (2022)
Working Paper: The Inexorable Recoveries of Unemployment (2022)
Working Paper: The Inexorable Recoveries of Unemployment (2022)
Working Paper: The Inexorable Recoveries of Unemployment (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedfwp:93023

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DOI: 10.24148/wp2021-20

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