Labor productivity and job-market flows: trends, cycles, and correlations

Thomas King

No 2005-04, Supervisory Policy Analysis Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Abstract: I derive measures of U.S. job-separation and job-matching rates from aggregate Current Population Survey data. Using an unrestricted unobserved-components approach, I decompose these series into trends and cycles and compare the results with the trend and cyclical behavior of labor-productivity growth. Both transitory and permanent shocks to productivity are strongly positively correlated with fluctuations in the rate of job matching and negatively correlated with cyclical fluctuations in separation rates. Productivity growth thereby accounts for about a third of the overall variation in the unemployment rate. However, it displays only weak correlation with trend separation rates. Because trend movements in unemployment are dominated by permanent changes in separation rates, productivity shocks alone cannot account for most of the movement in the natural rate of unemployment over time.

Keywords: Labor productivity; Employment (Economic theory) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:fip:fedlsp:2005-04

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
subscribe@stls.frb.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Supervisory Policy Analysis Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Scott St. Louis (scott.stlouis@stls.frb.org).