Search Results
Journal Article
Regional employment growth and the business cycle
Employment growth is highly correlated across regions. The author uses joint movements in regional employment growth to define and estimate a common factor, analogues to the business cycle. Regions differ substantially in the relative importance of cyclical shocks and idiosyncratic shocks in explaining the steady state variance in regional employment growth. For example, cyclical shocks account for almost 90 percent of the steady state variance in employment growth in the East South Central region and about 40 percent in the West South Central Region.
Working Paper
Trade policy and union wage dynamics
Journal Article
Can sectoral reallocation explain the jobless recovery?
This article reconsiders the case for sectoral labor reallocation's role in the jobless recovery. The authors review and critique previous attempts to measure sectoral reallocation, with a particular emphasis on the recent contribution of Groshen and Potter (2003). Their conclusion, based on an extension of Rissman (1997), is that the need of reallocate employment across industries was lower during the most recent two recessions than in previous business cycles. Therefore, sectoral reallocation likely has not played an important role in the jobless recoveries.
Journal Article
Sectoral wage growth and inflation
Journal Article
The self-employment duration of younger men over the business cycle
Spells of self-employment for younger men are typically of short duration with slightly more than half lasting two years or less. This article examines factors that lead to longer durations, focusing on the role of cyclical factors in distinguishing entrepreneurs from discouraged wage workers.
Working Paper
Labor market transitions and self-employment
The self-employed are a heterogeneous group. Some are self-employed because they are good at it, while others are self-employed because they cannot find a better paying salaried job. Data from the CPS for prime age males show that workers are almost twice as likely to enter self-employment from unemployment as from paid employment. Furthermore, almost 22% of workers exit self-employment within the year with most returning to paid employment. This paper develops a framework for examining transitions between the labor market states of unemployment, paid employment, and self-employment. The ...
Journal Article
Assessing the jobless recovery
This article reviews trends in employment growth during the recent recovery, including new evidence that much of the increase in self-employment since the beginning of the recession is likely a reflection of the weak labor market conditions of the last three years. The authors also offer thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of several explanations for the disappointing employment growth of the last few years.
Working Paper
The quest for the natural rate: evidence from a measure of labor market turbulence
The natural rate of unemployment changes over time as a result of structural shifts in the distribution of employment across sectors. This paper develops a Kalman filtering approach to measuring these structural shifts or turbulence. The technique is useful in distinguishing those changes in employment shares within an industry that are cyclical from those that are idiosyncratic. A measure of the business cycles is generated that is consistent with alternative measures of the cycle. A time--varying measure of the natural rate is constructed as the rate of unemployment that is consistent with ...