Worker Flows and Labour Market Adjustment During the Great Recession


Book Description

This paper analyzes how the labor market adjusts to the Great Recession. To this aim, we use the data for Latvia, a country that has experienced one of the most severe recessions in Europe and a subsequent remarkable recovery. Employing longitudinal EU SILC data and a panel data set constructed by us from various waves of the Latvian Labour Force Survey (LLFS), we estimate worker transitions between labor market states. Labor market adjustment takes place predominantly at the extensive margin since it is driven by flows from permanent wage employment to unemployment. We also show that older, non-Latvian and above all less skilled workers are especially hard hit by the economic crisis. Estimated transitions between four mutually exclusive occupational groups demonstrate that downward mobility is very limited even during the Great Recession. Finally, wage regressions suggest that job mobility is not associated with increased labour productivity during and immediately after the crisis.




EU Labour Market Behaviour During the Great Recession


Book Description

"This paper provides an analysis of the labour market adjustment to the 2008-2009 recession. It highlights differences in the response of employment and unemployment across countries and different socioeconomic groups. For all EU Member States, it provides evidence of the developments during the crisis of the monthly job finding and separation rates. This helps to assess whether the increase in unemployment is due to an increase of job separation or to a decline in the job finding rate. The paper discusses the risks of jobless growth and compares the dynamics of unemployment and employment across different periods. It provides evidence of an asymmetric response over the cycle, with recessions being characterised by more job destruction than by job creation in the following recoveries. The analysis of the wage dynamics suggests that there has been an adjustment in the compensation per employee led by the variable component; yet, this has not been sufficient to avoid the increase in the nominal unit labour costs due to labour hoarding."--Publication information page.




The Importance of Two-Sided Heterogeneity for the Cyclicality of Labour Market Dynamics


Book Description

Using administrative data on individual workers' employment history and firms, we investigate the cyclicality of worker flows on the German labour market. Focusing on heterogeneities on both sides of the labour market, we find that small firms hire much more workers from unemployment than large firms, and that they do so at the very beginning of an economic expansion. Later on in the expansion, overall hirings more frequently result from direct job-to-job transitions to larger firms. Transitions from unemployment to employment at large firms are generally found to be more (pro-)cyclical. However, this stylized fact disappears when the composition of the workforce is controlled for.




Worker Heterogeneity, Selection, and Employment Dynamics in the Face of Aggregate Demand and Pandemic Shocks


Book Description

In a new Keynesian model with random search in the labor market, endogenous selection among heterogeneous workers amplifies fluctuations in unemployment and results in excess unemployment volatility relative to the efficient allocation. Recessions disproportionately affect low-productivity workers, whose unemployment spells are inefficiently frequent and long. We consider a COVID-recession resulting from a negative demand shock and a surge in exogenous separations. High-productivity workers benefit if separations in a pandemic take the form of temporary layoffs, but this is not true for low-productivity workers. The unemployment consequences are especially severe when nominal interest rates are close to the effective lower bound.




From the Great Recession to Labour Market Recovery


Book Description

The Great Recession was one of the most traumatic global events of the first decade of the twenty-first century. This book showcases research undertaken by leading experts on the macroeconomic and labour market dimensions of the financial crisis of 2007-2009. It provides a global overview, interpreting the causes, consequences and policy responses to the Great Recession from the perspective of both developing and developed countries.




Disadvantaged Workers


Book Description

This book includes empirical contributions focusing on disadvantaged workers. According to the European Commission’s definition, disadvantaged workers include categories of workers with difficulties entering the labour market without assistance and hence, requiring the application of public measures aimed at improving their employment opportunities. In addition to the labour market perspective, this is also relevant in terms of social cohesion, which is one of the central objectives of the European Union and of its Member States. This work deals with the most relevant groups of disadvantaged workers, namely disabled workers, young workers, women living in depressed areas, migrants in the labour market and the long-term unemployed, and analyses the situation in the Italian, Spanish and some African labour markets. The determinants of disadvantage in the labour market are investigated, highlighting both the role of supply variables, including structural factors and the weakness on the demand side, the role of the economic crisis and the ineffectiveness of some labour policies. A complex framework emerges in which disadvantaged groups may share common problems, both in terms of integration into the labour market and in terms of working conditions, but often require group-specific policies, taking into account their intergroup heterogeneity.




The Labor Market and Economic Adjustment


Book Description

This paper examines the role of the labor market in the transmission process of adjustment policies in developing countries. It begins by reviewing the recent evidence regarding the functioning of these markets. It then studies the implications of wage inertia, nominal contracts, labor market segmentation, and impediments to labor mobility for stabilization policies. The effect of labor market reforms on economic flexibility and the channels through which labor market imperfections alter the effects of structural adjustment measures are discussed next. The last part of the paper identifies a variety of issues that may require further investigation, such as the link between changes in relative wages and the distributional effects of adjustment policies.




Worker Heterogeneity and Labor Market Frictions


Book Description

This dissertation contains several lines of research in macroeconomics and labor economics conducted during the course of my phd. The unifying theme of this research is the study of labor markets that are subject to macro-search frictions and are populated by heterogeneous workers. Combining these features is important for our understanding of the functioning of labor markets, both from a positive and normative standpoint. The first chapter of this dissertation is resolutely on the positive side. It analyzes how the combination of labor market frictions and worker heterogeneity in skills can shed light on the observed fluctuations in entries into and exits out of the labor force. The second chapter is also on the positive ground, but it brings labor market policies to the fore of the analysis. Along with heterogeneity in human capital over the lifecycle, it shows how some policy tools have contributed to the divergent employment experiences of older workers in Europe and in the United States since the 1980s. The third chapter more naturally lends itself to policy implications. It provides a quantitative study of the employment and welfare effects of statutory severance payments in an economy with wealth heterogeneity reflecting the absence of perfect insurance markets faced by risk-averse workers.