Help-Wanted Advertising, Job Vacancies, and Unemployment

macroeconomics, unemployment

Flexible Staffing Arrangements and Employers' Short-Term Adjustment Strategies

This paper reports new evidence from a survey of over 408 U.S. employers concerning their use of temporary and on-call workers. More than 90 percent of responding organizations reported reliance on these flexible staffing arrangements. They accounted for an average of 1.5 percent of total labor input at user organizations during 1985; at some organizations, they accounted for 10 percent or even 20 percent of total labor input. Four-fifths of survey respondents indicated that flexible staffing arrangements play an important role in absorbing workload fluctuations. Moreover, organizations with highly seasonal or highly cyclical demand made significantly greater use of flexible staffing arrangements during 1985 than organizations with less seasonal or less cyclical demand. The use of flexible staffing arrangements appears to be a more important component of employers' short-term adjustment strategies than has previously been recognized.

Changes in Unemployment Duration and Labor Force Attachment

This paper accounts for the observed increase in unemployment duration relative to the unemployment rate in the U.S. over the past thirty years, typified by the record low level of short-term unemployment. We show that part of the increase is due to changes in how duration is measured, a consequence of the 1994 Current Population Survey redesign. Another part is due to the passage of the baby boomers into their prime working years. After accounting for these shifts, most of the remaining increase in unemployment duration relative to the unemployment rate is concentrated among women, whose unemployment rate has fallen sharply in the last two decades while their unemployment duration has increased. Using labor market transition data, we show that this is a consequence of the increase in women's labor force attachment.

Length of Service and the Operation of Internal Labor Markets

This paper presents a summary of the evidence which has recently been collected concerning the role of length of service in the operation of internal labor markets. It argues that these data are inconsistent with the human capital model of the experience-earnings and experience-layoff relationships. The paper concludes by asserting that if we are ever to fully understand the role of service, newdata are needed.

Labor Adjustment Under Different Institutional Structures: A Case Study of Germany and The United States

Like most Western European countries, Germany stringently regulates dismissals and layoffs. Critics contend that this regulation raises the costs of employment adjustment and hence impedes employers' ability to respond to fluctuations in demand. Other German labor policies, however, most especially the availability of unemployment insurance benefits for those on short time, facilitate the adjustment of average hours per worker in lieu of layoffs. Building on earlier work, we compare the adjustment of employment, hours and inventories to demand shocks in the German and U.S. manufacturing sectors. We find that, in the short run, whereas U.S. employers rely principally on the adjustment of employment levels to respond to demand shocks, German employers rely principally on the adjustment of average hours per worker. The adjustment of overall labor input is generally similar in the two countries. Short-time work makes a very important contribution to short-run hours adjustment in Germany. We find little evidence that inventories help to buffer demand fluctuations in either country. Our findings suggest that, given appropriate supporting institutions, strong worker job security can be compatible with employers' need for flexibility in staffing levels.

Involuntary Terminations under Explicit and Implicit Employment Contracts

This study investigates where and when last-in-first-out permanent layoff policies seem to go hand in hand with compensation policies under which the net value of senior workers appears to be less than that of their junior peers. The investigation relies upon both the approximately 260 usable responses to a survey we mailed out to a sample of U.S. firms and microdata from the computerized personnel files of a major U.S. corporation. Our findings for U.S. companies outside of agriculture and construction lead us to the following three conclusions: (1) For most employees, it appears that protection against job loss grows with seniority, although net value to the firm does not.(2) While a very sizeable percentage of nonunion workers may be covered by implicit employment contracts which give more protection against termination to those with more seniority, a much higher percentage of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements seem to enjoy such protection; and (3) The job protection afforded senior nonunion personnel, especially exempt employees, appears to be less strong than that provided to union members.