Payroll Taxes and Youth Labor Demand

Johan Egebark and Niklas Kaunitz

No 1001, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: In 2007, the Swedish employer-paid payroll tax was reduced substantially for young workers. We estimate the labor market response for different ages, and at different phases of the business cycle. The overall impact on employment and wages is relatively small, implying an average labor demand elasticity for young workers at around –0.32. While the effect on wages is consistently small, the employment effect differs markedly across ages and over the business cycle. For 21–22 year-old workers, the employment increase is 4–5 times larger than for 25-year-olds, and the estimated demand elasticities are strongly procyclical, approaching zero in the deep 2009 recession. These results suggest that payroll tax reductions need to be narrowly targeted, and carefully timed, in order to be effective. In addition, we find that the payroll tax reduction had no effects on hours worked. There is also little evidence that the employment effect for an individual remained when she was no longer eligible for the tax reduction.

Keywords: Payroll taxes; Labor demand; Youth Employment; Labor demand elasticity; Age heterogeneity; Business Cycle; Wage shifting; Tax subsidy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H22 H25 H32 J23 J38 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2014-01-03, Revised 2017-06-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-lma, nep-pbe and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Journal Article: Payroll taxes and youth labor demand (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1001

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