The cyclicality of hires, separations, and job-to-job transitions

By Robert Shimer. 2005

157 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper measures the job-finding, separation, and job-to-job transition rates in the United States from 1948 to 2004. The job-finding and job-to-job transition rates are strongly procyclical and the separation rate is nearly acyclical, especially since 1985. The author develops a simple model in which unemployed workers search for jobs and employed workers search for better jobs. The model predicts that an increase in either the job-finding rate or the separation rate raises the job-to-job transition rate, which is qualitatively and quantitatively consistent with the available evidence. In contrast, if the job-finding rate were acyclical and the separation rate countercyclical, as is the conventional wisdom, the model predicts that the job-to-job transition rate would be counterfactually countercyclical.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Health Professions

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8c7248a87cc78b16f1bbf29d0b82b78bade3eab1

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Gilles Duranton
2. W. Strange
3. Carlos Thomas
4. S. Fujita
5. Guido Blasio
6. Garey Ramey
7. Mariano Bosch
8. T. Lester

In General Health Professions

1. Arindrajit Dubé
2. R. Hall
3. Carlos Thomas
4. T. Lester
5. William F. Maloney
6. M. Reich
7. S. Fujita
8. Mariano Bosch

Citations in the corpus

• Marshallian Labour Market Pooling: Evidence From Italy (2013, background): “%) report having 3 See Shimer (2005) for US figures.”
• The Determinants of Rising Informality in Brazil: Evidence from Gross Worker Flows (2007, methodology): “Explaining these stylized facts, Shimer (2005b) and Hall (2005) argue, requires introducing wage rigidities into standard matching models.”
• The Revolving Door and Worker Flows in Banking Regulation (2014, unknown): “…capital,                                                              13 Looking at the time variation, we see an upward trend and some pro-cyclicality of job-transitions, with transitions about 1 to 3 percent lower during recessions (consistent with previous findings, for example Shimer (2005)).”
• Minimum Wage Shocks, Employment Flows, and Labor Market Frictions (2012, background): “Indeed, longer spells between jobs and fewer job-tojob transtions both occur during economic downturns (e.g., Shimer 2005, 2012).”
• The Cyclicality of Job Loss and Hiring (2006, methodology): “Shimer (2005a) has analyzed transition hazard rates using a three-state version of the method we use.”
• Search and matching frictions and optimal monetary policy (2008, methodology): “Letting zt R nit nt zitdi = vt nt denote the average vacancy rate, I obtain ẑt = v̂t n̂t: (36) The log-linear approximation of the law of motion of the employment stock, equation (1), is given by n̂t+1 = (1 p)n̂t + ̂t; (37) where p p( ) and I have used the fact that, in the steady state, pu n = .”
• Comparative Analysis of Labor Market Dynamics Using Markov Processes: An Application to Informality (2007, unknown): “…where we find that upturns are accompanied by increased search of workers across jobs- job to job transitions are procyclical (see Nagypal 2004 and Shimer, 2005b): If formal and informal markets offer jobs of overall equivalent quality, albeit different packages of characteristics, we would…”
• Job Loss, Job Finding, and Unemployment in the U.S. Economy over the Past Fifty Years (2005, background): “Robert Shimer has made estimates of the entry rate from data from the Current Population Survey (Shimer (2005b)).”