High unemployment after the recession: mostly cyclical, but adjusting slowly

Unemployment has remained very high since the end of last recession, leading some economists to suggest that the underlying trend of the unemployment rate must have risen, driving unemployment permanently higher. Using a more accurate method of calculating the underlying trend, I find that the long-term rate has not risen and that most of the recent increase in the unemployment rate can be attributed to cyclical causes. But the weak nature of the recovery in real output and the slow rate of worker reallocation are likely to keep unemployment at relatively high levels for the near term.Unemployment ; Economic conditions - United States

The ins and outs of unemployment in the long run: a new estimate for the natural rate?

In this paper, we present a simple, reduced form model of comovements in real activity and unemployment flows and use it to uncover the trend changes in these flows, which determine the trend in the unemployment rate. We argue that this trend rate has several key features that are reminiscent of a “natural rate.” We show that the natural rate, measured this way, has been relatively stable in the last decade, even after the last recession hit the U.S. economy. This relatively muted change was due to two opposing trend changes: On one hand, the trend in the job-finding rate, after being relatively stable for decades, declined by a significant margin in the last decade, pushing trend unemployment up. On the other hand, the separation rate has somewhat offset this effect with a continued secular decline since the early 1980s. We also show that, contrary to business-cycle frequency movements, most of the low-frequency variation in the unemployment rate could be accounted for by changes in the trend of separation rates, not job-finding rates. The notable exception is the last decade, when clear trend changes in both flows imply opposing effects on the trend unemployment rate and slower worker reallocation in the U.S. economy.Unemployment

Are jobless recoveries the new norm?

Recent recessions have been followed by exceptionally slow recoveries in the labor market, and the current recession is shaping up to follow the same pattern. We take a close look at some labor market measures and uncover a difference between these recent recessions and those that preceded them - workers are staying unemployed longer. This difference is a clue we can use to predict how the current labor market recovery might proceed in the near future.Economic conditions ; Recessions ; Unemployment

The minimum wage and the labor market

New models of employment show that there are some cases in which a minimum wage can have positive effects on employment and social welfare. The effects depend ultimately on the prevailing market wage and the frictions in the market. Evidence to date does not support the view that raising the minimum wage will lead to positive employment effects.Minimum wage ; Labor market

Search frictions and the labor wedge

This paper assesses whether labor market frictions, in the form of searching and matching, can help explain movements in the labor wedge--the gap between the marginal rate of substitution (MRS) and the marginal productivity of labor in a perfectly competitive business cycle model. Results suggest that those frictions are not able to explain fluctuations in the labor wedge, per se. However, the introduction of extensive and intensive margin shows that measuring the MRS in terms of total hours artificially introduces procyclicality in the MRS. When the MRS is correctly measured in terms of hours per worker, the labor wedge obtained is less variable than the one of the perfectly competitive model. A Frisch elasticity of 2.8, as in most macro models, implies a 20 percent decline in the variability of the labor wedge. A Frisch elasticity closer to micro estimates implies an even higher reduction. Finally, we show that it is possible to measure a strongly procyclical labor wedge as in CKM (2007) even if the actual data generating process does not have any labor wedge but has search frictions that allow for movements in both labor margins.Labor market ; Business cycles

Positive and normative effects of a minimum wage

We review the positive and normative effects of a minimum wage in various versions of a search-theoretic model of the labor market.Minimum wage ; Labor market

Labor market rigidity, unemployment, and the Great Recession

Countries with very flexible institutions and labor market policies, like the U.S., experienced substantial increases in unemployment over the course of the Great Recession, while countries with relatively rigid institutions and strict labor market policies, like France, fared better. However, this better short-term performance comes with a tradeoff; evidence suggests that flexible labor markets keep unemployment lower in the long run.Labor market ; Unemployment ; Recessions

On the Cyclicality of Labor Market Mismatch and Aggregate Employment Flows

This paper combines a discrete-time dynamic general equilibrium articulation of the standard model of labor market search with observed U.S. time series measures on employment, vacancies, and aggregate output to uncover the cyclical properties of three unobserved forcing variables that comprise the exogenous state of the aggregate labor market: labor productivity, the rate of job separation, and the allocational efficiency of the labor market. We posit the latter variable to be inversely related to the degree of mismatch in the pool of searching workers and vacancies, given numbers of each, and identify its movements as scalar shifts in the standard matching function. Given that the model exactly reconciles observed net employment changes, our procedure also implies measured time series of the flows into and out of employment. We find that labor productivity, the job separation rate and allocational efficiency are all procyclical with the latter two highly variable. These cyclical patterns lead to procyclical implied gross employment flows, thereby concentrating labor force reallocation during booms. We discuss the implications for conventional views of business cycle fluctuations and for the standard search theories of labor market behavior.

Search Frictions and the Labor Wedge

This paper assesses whether labor market frictions, in the form of searching and matching, can help explain movements in the labor wedge—the gap between the marginal rate of substitution (MRS) and the marginal productivity of labor in a perfectly competitive business cycle model. Results suggest that those frictions are not able to explain fluctuations in the labor wedge, per se. However, the introduction of extensive and intensive margin shows that measuring the MRS in terms of total hours artificially introduces procyclicality in the MRS. When the MRS is correctly measured in terms of hours per worker, the labor wedge obtained is less variable than the one of the perfectly competitive model. A Frisch elasticity of 2.8, as in most macro models, implies a 20 percent decline in the variability of the labor wedge. A Frisch elasticity closer to micro estimates implies an even higher reduction. Finally, we show that it is possible to measure a strongly procyclical labor wedge as in CKM (2007) even if the actual data generating process does not have any labor wedge but has search frictions that allow for movements in both labor margins.Labor Market Search; Business Cycle Accounting; Labor Wedge

Unemployment after the recession: a new natural rate?

The past recession has hit the labor market especially hard, and economists are wondering whether some fundamentals of the market have changed because of that blow. Many are suggesting that the natural rate of long-term unemployment—the level of unemployment an economy can’t go below—has shifted permanently higher. We use a new measure that is based on the rates at which workers are finding and losing jobs and which provides a more accurate assessment of the natural rate. We find that the natural rate of unemployment has indeed shifted higher—but much less so than has been suggested. Surprising trends in both the job-finding and job-separation rates explain much about the current state of the unemployment rate.Unemployment ; Recessions ; Economic conditions - United States