Search Results
Potential Jobs Impacted by Covid-19
In this blog, we conduct an exercise to determine the potential consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on near-term labor market outcomes. This is not a forecast, but an attempt to provide some discipline around potential bounds of the number of jobs impacted by the crisis. We estimate that between nine and 26 million jobs are potentially affected,1 with a best guess of around 15 million. If these jobs are lost, the June unemployment rate could reach between 14% and 18%, with a best guess of around 15%.
Working Paper
Job flows, jobless recoveries, and the Great Moderation
This paper uses new data on job creation and job destruction to find evidence of a link between the jobless recoveries of the last two recessions and the recent decline in aggregate volatility known as the Great Moderation. The author finds that the last two recessions are characterized by jobless recoveries that came about through contrasting margins of employment adjustment?a relatively slow decline in job destruction in 1991-92 and persistently low job creation in 2002-03. In manufacturing, he finds that these patterns followed a secular decline in the magnitude of job flows and an abrupt ...
Working Paper
The Shifting Reasons for Beveridge-Curve Shifts
We discuss how the relative importance of factors that contribute to movements of the U.S. Beveridge curve has changed from 1960 to 2023. We review these factors in the context of a simple flow analogy used to capture the main insights of search and matching theories of the labor market. Changes in inflow rates, related to demographics, accounted for Beveridge curve shifts between 1960 and 2000. A reduction in matching efficiency, that depressed unemployment outflows, shifted the curve outwards in the wake of the Great Recession. In contrast, the most recent shifts in the Beveridge curve ...
Is the Unemployment Rate a Good Measure of People Currently Out of Work?
Update, May 15, 2020: Following the release of the latest Current Population Survey estimates and related micro data, we are able to calculate the actual value of our U-Cov rate for April, which was 30.7% (not seasonally adjusted). This was over a 17 percentage point increase from March, significantly higher than the 10 percentage point increase in the official “U3” unemployment rate (to 14.4% in April). A 4.8 million increase in the number of people working part-time for economic reasons, a 4.3 million increase in those on unpaid leave, and a 4.5 million increase in those out of the ...
Journal Article
How do businesses recruit?
Most economic theories of hiring and job seeking assume that businesses post vacancies when they demand more labor. Workers then apply for the job, and the most qualified candidate is hired. However, as those who have ever recruited or applied for a job know, the recruiting process is considerably more complex. In this article, Jason Faberman discusses some recent research on how employers recruit. It shows that the extent to which a business uses various recruiting channels depends on the characteristics of the employer, how fast the employer is growing (or contracting), and the overall ...
Newsletter
Job Switching and Wage Growth
This article shows a remarkably strong relationship between job switching and nominal wage growth. We also find a fairly strong relationship between job switching and the cyclical component of inflation. Furthermore, job switching seems to be predictive of both wage growth and inflation.
Discussion Paper
How Do People Find Jobs?
Most people find themselves looking for work at some point in their adult lives. But what brings employers and job seekers together? And does searching for a new job while unemployed lead to different outcomes than searching while employed? Little is known about the job search process for unemployed workers. Even less is known about the search process and outcomes for currently employed workers?so?called ?on?the?job? search. This Liberty Street Economics post aims to shed light on these questions and to draw some conclusions for our understanding of labor market dynamics more generally.
Working Paper
The Intensity of Job Search and Search Duration
We use panel data on individual applications to job openings on a job search website to study search intensity and search duration. Our data allow us to control for the composition of job seekers and changes in the number of available job openings over the duration of search. We find that (1) the number of applications sent by a job seeker declines over the duration of search, and (2) longer-duration job seekers send relatively more applications per week throughout their entire search. The latter finding contradicts the implications of standard labor search models. We argue that these models ...
Working Paper
The relationship between the establishment age distribution and urban growth
This paper presents new evidence on the relationship between a metropolitan area?s employment growth and its establishment age distribution. The author finds that cities with a relatively younger distribution of establishments tend to have higher growth, as well as higher job and establishment turnover. Geographic variations in the age distribution account for 38 percent of the geographic differences in growth, compared to the 32 percent accounted for by variations in industry composition. Differences are disproportionately accounted for by entrants and young (5 years or younger) ...
Journal Article
Unemployment among recent veterans during the Great Recession
The authors find that prolonged deployments overseas account for much of the difference in unemployment rates between recent veterans and nonveterans during the Great Recession.