Working Paper
Declining Labor Force Attachment and Downward Trends in Unemployment and Participation
Figura, Andrew; Barnichon, Regis (2013-10-01)
The U.S. labor market witnessed two apparently unrelated secular movements in the last 30 years: a decline in unemployment between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, and a decline in participation since the early 2000s. Using CPS micro data and a stock-flow accounting framework, we show that a substantial, and hitherto unnoticed, factor behind both trends is a decline in the share of nonparticipants who are at the margin of participation. A lower share of marginal nonparticipants implies a lower unemployment rate, because marginal nonparticipants enter the labor force mostly through ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2013-88

Working Paper
How Large were the Effects of Emergency and Extended Benefits on Unemployment during the Great Recession and its Aftermath?
Figura, Andrew; Ratner, David (2017-06-27)
This paper presents estimates of the effect of unemployment benefit extensions during the Great Recession on unemployment and labor force participation. Unlike many recent studies of this subject, our estimates, following the work of Hagedorn, Karahan, Manovskii, and Mitman (2016), are inclusive of the effects of benefit extensions on employer, as well as, worker behavior. To identify the effect of benefit extensions, we use plausibly exogenous changes in the rules governing benefit extensions and their differential effects on the maximum duration of benefits across states. We find that the ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2017-068

Working Paper
Workweek flexibility and hours variation
Figura, Andrew (2004)
I use the term workweek flexibility to describe the ease of changing output by altering the number of hours per worker. Despite the fact that workweek flexibility is potentially important for understanding the cyclical behavior of marginal cost and prices, as well as cyclical movements in hours and output, it has received little attention. Using insights from a simple model of employment and the workweek, I use mean workweek levels to identify the effect of workweek flexibility and then show that it is an important determinant of firms' marginal cost schedules and the variance of industry ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2004-59

Working Paper
Why are plant deaths countercyclical: reallocation timing or fragility?
Figura, Andrew (2006)
Because plant deaths destroy specific capital with large local economic impacts and potentially important macroeconomic effects, understanding the causes of deaths and, in particular, why they are concentrated in cyclical downturns, is important. The reallocation-timing hypothesis posits that plants suffering adverse permanent demand/productivity shocks delay shutdowns until cyclical downturns when plant capacity is less valuable, while the fragility hypothesis posits that shutdowns occur in downturns because the option value of maintaining the plant through weak demand periods is too low. I ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2006-31

Discussion Paper
The Labor Share of Income and Equilibrium Unemployment
Figura, Andrew; Ratner, David (2015-06-08)
After rising to 10 percent in the wake of the Great Recession, the unemployment rate is now approaching a level that many observers--including the Congressional Budget Office, as shown in Figure 1--associate with the natural rate of unemployment.
FEDS Notes , Paper 2015-06-08-1

Working Paper
The causes and consequences of economic restructuring: evidence from the early 21st century
Wascher, William L.; Figura, Andrew (2008)
A number of industries underwent large and permanent reductions in employment growth at the beginning of this decade, a process we label as restructuring. We describe how restructuring occurred and what its consequences were for the economy. In particular, we find that restructuring stemmed largely from relative demand shocks (though technology shocks were important in some industries) and that elevated levels of permanent job destruction and permanent layoffs were distinguishing features of industries subject to restructuring. In addition, most workers displaced in restructuring industries ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2008-41

Working Paper
The effect of restructuring on unemployment
Figura, Andrew (2003)
This paper finds that the permanent job losses associated with industrial restructuring have significantly boosted the variance of unemployment, causing it to rise much higher in recessions than it would have without cyclically correlated restructuring. Moreover, the influence of restructuring has increased noticeably in the 1980s and 1990s, acting to increase economic instability at a time when other factors were operating to reduce it.
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2003-56

Working Paper
Is reallocation related to the cycle? A look at permanent and temporary job flows
Figura, Andrew (2002)
How much of aggregate employment fluctuations is due to plants destroying and then recreating the same jobs over the cycle and how much is due to some plants permanently destroying jobs in a recession and other plants permanently creating jobs in an expansion? This paper decomposes plant level job flows into permanent and temporary components to answer this question, and finds that the permanent reallocation of jobs across plants accounts for approximately 30 percent of the cyclical fluctuations in aggregate employment.
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2002-16