When economic activity slows down, labor markets may undergo extensive structural change-the permanent reallocation of workers across industries. Job losses can be heavy, and creating new jobs and retraining displaced workers to fill them can take time. A high degree of restructuring may help to...

The current recovery has seen steady growth in output but no corresponding rise in employment. A look at layoff trends and industry job gains and losses in 2001-03 suggests that structural change - the permanent relocation of workers from some industries to others - may help explain the stalled...

Recent concerns about the transfer of U.S. services jobs to overseas workers have deepened long-standing fears about the effects of trade on the domestic labor market. But a balanced view of the impact of trade requires that we consider jobs created through the production of U.S. exports as well...

A look at how the dwindling manufacturing base in the Midwest's 10 major metropolitan areas has transformed them into service centers for their surrounding communities, which have picked up many of the factory jobs that have left the cities.

Inflation has been accused of causing distortionary prices and wage fluctuations (sand) as well as lauded for facilitating adjustments to shocks when wages are rigid downwards (grease). This paper investigates whether these two effects can be distinguished from each other in a labor market by...

An examination of the intensity of supervision in the workplace and its effect on the pay of nonsupervisory employees through the use a wage survey of the hospital industry.

An analysis of the variance of wages within and between industries, finding that wage differences are virtually stationary over time and are related to establishment size.

This paper decomposes the observed wage difference between male and female workers into the portions associated with three types of segregation and with the individual's sex. The contribution of each type of segregation is the product of two factors: the extent of segregation and the wage...

How do the complex institutions involved in wage setting affect wage changes? The International Wage Flexibility Project provides new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing workers. We analyze individuals’ earnings in 31 different data sets from sixteen countries, from which...