Do recessions speed up or impede productivity-enhancing reallocation? To investigate this question, we use U.S. linked employer-employee data to examine how worker flows contribute to productivity growth over the business cycle. We find that in expansions high-productivity firms grow faster...

An increasing number of data sources have measured the components of reallocation of jobs across employers and workers across jobs. Whether and how job reallocation across employers and excess worker “churn” affect other measures of the health of the U.S. economy remains an open question. In...

This paper explores the evolution of the average wage of employees over the life-cycle of a manufacturing plant. The average wage starts out low for a new plant and increases along with labor productivity as the plant ages. As a plant approaches exit, its average wage falls, but more slowly than...