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Working Paper
Recall and Unemployment
We document in the Survey of Income and Program Participation covering 1990- 2013 that a surprisingly large share of workers return to their previous employer after a jobless spell and experience very different unemployment and employment outcomes than job switchers. The probability of recall is much less procyclical and volatile than the probability of finding a new employer. We add to a quantitative, and otherwise canonical, search-and-matching model of the labor market a recall option, which can be activated freely following aggregate and job-specific productivity shocks. Recall and search ...
Working Paper
The Unemployed with Jobs and without Jobs
Potential workers are classified as unemployed if they seek work but are not working. The unemployed population contains two groups—those with jobs and those without jobs. Those with jobs are on furlough or temporary layoff. This group expanded tremendously in April 2020, at the trough of the pandemic recession. They wait out periods of non-work with the understanding that their jobs still exist and that they will be recalled. We show that the resulting temporary-layoff unemployment mostly dissipated by the end of 2020. Potential workers without jobs constitute what we call jobless ...