Search Results
Report
Job search behavior over the business cycle
We create a novel measure of job search effort starting in 1994 by exploiting the overlap between the Current Population Survey and the American Time Use Survey. We examine the cyclical behavior of aggregate job search effort using time series and cross-state variation and find that it is countercyclical. About half of the countercyclical movement is explained by a cyclical shift in the observable characteristics of the unemployed. Individual responses to labor market conditions and drops in wealth are important in explaining the remaining variation.
Newsletter
How do unemployment benefits relate to job search behavior?
We examine the relationship between unemployment insurance and job search using data from 2013 through 2019. Our research shows that the unemployed exert a high level of effort to find work. This is especially true for those receiving unemployment insurance benefits. Those who have exhausted their unemployment benefits search less intensely for work, but are also willing to accept work that pays considerably less than their prior job.
Working Paper
Family Job Search and Wealth: The Added Worker Effect Revisited
We propose and estimate a model of family job search and wealth accumulation with data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). This dataset reveals a very asymmetric labor market for household members who share that their job finding is stimulated by their partners' job separation. We uncover a job search-theoretic basis for this added worker effect, which occurs mainly during economic downturns, but also by increased non-employment transfers. Thus, our analysis shows that the policy goal of in-creasing non-employment transfers to support a worker's job search is partially ...
Working Paper
Enhanced Unemployment Insurance Benefits in the United States during COVID-19: Equity and Efficiency
We assess the effects of the historically unprecedented expansion of U.S. unemployment insurance (UI) payments during the COVID-19 pandemic. The adverse economic impacts of the pandemic, notably the pattern of job losses and earnings reductions, were disproportionately born by lower-income individuals. Focusing on household income as a broad measure of well-being, we document that UI payments almost completely offset the increase in household income inequality that otherwise would have occurred in 2020 and 2021. We also examine the impacts of the $600 increase in weekly UI benefit payments, ...
Working Paper
Worker and Firm Search in the Labor Market: Evidence from Classified Advertisements
We present new monthly U.S. city-level and national measures of worker and firm search from 1900 to 1938, derived from scanned images of U.S. newspapers. To our knowledge, we are the first to systematically use the “situations-wanted” advertisements placed by job seekers. We document fresh insights into early 20th-century labor market dynamics: (1) worker and firm search efforts are procyclical; (2) posting costs affect advertising behavior and labor search intensity; (3) the Beveridge curve is stable over the last 125 years, with similar shifts following the 1918 flu and Covid-19 ...
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
Reservation Wages Revisited: Empirics with the Canonical Model
Using innovative longitudinal data from a survey of unemployment insurance (UI) recipients, we test several implications of a canonical job search model for reservation wages during unemployment spells. First, consistent with the model, we find that reservation wages fall faster when UI benefit durations are shorter. However, workers set their initial reservation wages higher, and adjust them slower, relative to model predictions. Second, workers' expectations—elicited at the beginning of their unemployment spell—about how their reservation wage will evolve if they remain unemployed are ...
Working Paper
Family Job Search and Wealth: The Added Worker Effect Revisited
We develop and estimate a model of family job search and wealth accumulation. Individuals' job finding and job separations depend on their partners' job turnover and wages as well as common wealth. We fit this model to data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). This dataset reveals a very asymmetric labor market for household members, who share that their job finding is stimulated by their partners' job separation, particularly during economic downturns. We uncover a job search-theoretic basis for this added worker effect and find that this effect is stronger with more ...
Working Paper
Labor Market Shocks and Monetary Policy
We study the positive and normative implications for inflation of employer-to-employer (EE) worker transitions by developing a heterogeneous agent New Keynesian model featuring a frictional labor market with on-the-job search. We find that EE dynamics played an important role in shaping the differential inflation dynamics observed during the Great Recession and COVID-19 recoveries. Despite both recoveries sharing similar unemployment dynamics, the recovery from the Great Recession exhibited subdued EE transitions and inflation dynamics. In our model, the optimal monetary policy involves a ...
Report
Labor Market Policies during an Epidemic
We study the positive and normative implications of labor market policies that counteract the economic fallout from containment measures during an epidemic. We incorporate a standard epidemiological model into an equilibrium search model of the labor market to compare unemployment insurance (UI) expansions and payroll subsidies. In isolation, payroll subsidies that preserve match capital and enable a swift economic recovery are preferred over a cost-equivalent UI expansion. When considered jointly, however, a cost-equivalent optimal mix allocates 20 percent of the budget to payroll subsidies ...