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.

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.

Experience, Performance, and Earnings

This study provides direct evidence concerning the relationship between experience and performance among managerial and professional employees doing similar work in two major U. S. corporations. The facts presented indicate that while, within grade levels, there is a strong positive association between experience and relative earnings, there is either no association or a negative association between experience and relative rated performance. If we are correct that the performance ratings given to managerial and professional employees in any grade level adequately reflect those employees' relative productivity in the year of assessment, the results imply that the human capital on-the-job training model cannot explain a substantial part of the ob-served return to labor market experience.

Length of Service, Terminations and the Nature of the Employment Relationship

This paper presents new survey evidence that relative protection against job loss grows with length of service, independent of their net value to the firm. This protection makes good sense given that at most companies employees appear to earn less than their value marginal product in the early part of their tenure and more than their value marginal product in the latter part; without job protection policies for senior employees, the firm would have an incentive to terminate them when their "spot" earnings went above their "spot" value marginal product. In particular, we find that a very large percentage (over 95 percent) of hourly union members outside of agriculture and construction are covered by protective policies for senior workers and, that a somewhat smaller, but still substantial, percentage (about 85 percent) of comparable nonunion hourlies also have some protection against jobloss in their senior years. The potential reasons for these findings are briefly discussed.