U.K. data from 1993-2012 suggest that in economic downturns a smaller fraction of unemployed workers change their career when starting a new job. The proportion of total hires involving a career change also drops. This implies that career changes decline during recessions. The results indicate...

We provide a set of comparable estimates for the rates of inflow to and outflow from unemployment for 14 OECD economies using publicly available data. We then devise a method to decompose changes in unemployment into contributions accounted for by changes in inflow and outflow rates for cases...

Conventional analyses of cyclical fluctuations in the labor market ascribe a minor role to the labor force participation margin. In contrast, a flows-based decomposition of the variation in labor market stocks reveals that transitions at the participation margin account for around one-third of...

Over the past quarter century, labor’s share of income in the United States has trended downwards, reaching its lowest level in the postwar period after the Great Recession. Detailed examination of the magnitude, determinants and implications of this decline delivers five conclusions. First,...

We discuss the magnitude of and reasons for the shift in the Beveridge curve in the U.S. since the Great Recession and argue that skill mismatch and the extension of unemployment insurance benefits likely have played a nontrivial role in this shift. We then introduce a method to estimate fitted...

We construct a price index with weights on the prices of different PCE goods chosen to minimize the welfare costs of nominal distortions: a cost-of-nominal-distortions index (CONDI). We compute these weights in a multisector New Keynesian model with time-dependent price setting, calibrated using...

In the aftermath of WorldWar II, the world's economies exhibited very different rates of economic recovery. We provide evidence that those countries that caught up the most with the U.S. in the postwar period are those that also saw an acceleration in the speed of adoption of new technologies....

Using data from the Current Population Survey from 1980 through 2010 we examine what drives variation and cyclicality in the growth rate of real wages over time. We employ a novel decomposition technique that allows us to divide the time series for median weekly earnings growth into the part...

I introduce a method that combines data from the U.S. Current Population Survey, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, and state-level Job Vacancy Surveys to construct annual estimates of the number of job openings in the U.S. in the Spring by industry and occupation. I present these estimates...

Since the end of the Great Recession in mid-2009, the unemployment rate has recovered slowly, falling by only one percentage point from its peak. We find that the lackluster labor market recovery can be traced in large part to weakness in aggregate demand; only a small part seems attributable to...