Regional employment growth and the business cycle

Abstract

Employment growth is highly correlated across regions. The author uses joint movements in regional employment growth to define and estimate a common factor, analogues to the business cycle. Regions differ substantially in the relative importance of cyclical shocks and idiosyncratic shocks in explaining the steady state variance in regional employment growth. For example, cyclical shocks account for almost 90 percent of the steady state variance in employment growth in the East South Central region and about 40 percent in the West South Central Region.Employment (Economic theory) ; Regional economics ; Business cycles