This paper tests the hypothesis that firms adjust to the business cycle by altering employment through promotion and hiring and holding the salary structure and salaries assigned to jobs relatively constant. Two comprehensive firm-level panel datasets are used to examine salary setting and...

We discuss the ability of standard estimates of the correlation of wages and employment to measure the relative strength of aggregate demand and supply shocks, given that the choice of time period, deflator, and explanatory variables inherently biases the estimated cyclical coefficients toward...

This paper tests for nominal salary rigidity using panel data from two large service-sector firms. Distributions of the firms' salary changes exhibit nominal rigidity: few nominal pay cuts, a pile-up of observations at zero, and positive skewness and asymmetry. In addition, these characteristics...

We examine the extent of downward nominal wage rigidity using the microdata underlying the BLS employment cost index--an extensive, establishment-based dataset with detailed information on wage and benefit costs. We find stronger evidence of downward nominal wage rigidity than did previous...

Despite the long economic expansion, employment among young men is lower today than it was in the late 1960s. This decline has been largely driven by a 17 percentage point reduction in the proportion of high school dropouts working even a single week per year. One common explanation for this...