Labour turnover is a crucial element of contemporary economic life. It can improve productivity if more productive workers replace less productive ones. However, in the short run, it generates sizeable labour adjustment costs (LACs), including productivity losses. This paper sheds new light on...

This study examines the effectiveness of digital recruitment platforms in addressing labor shortages within Norway's shipbuilding and ship-repair industry. Through a data analysis of 446 job applications over a 12-month period, this study evaluates key recruitment metrics, including application...

We partner with a Public Employment Service to examine whether jobseekers can be encouraged to reskill for shortage occupations. In a large-scale field experiment involving 100,000 recently unemployed individuals, we provide information on shortage occupations and related training opportunities....

This study estimates and decomposes recruitment elasticity, a key measure of employer market power, across job-matching stages using data from Japan's largest job-matching intermediary. On average, recruitment elasticity is negative but not statistically significantly different from zero....

Studying employment dynamics (i.e., rates at which firms add or shed workers) of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) like trucking firms is critical to inform labor market theory and public policy. We examine U.S. trucking firm employment dynamics during the highly expansive period of...

We partner with a Public Employment Service to examine whether jobseekers can be encouraged to reskill for shortage occupations. In a large-scale field experiment involving 100,000 recently unemployed individuals, we provide information on shortage occupations and related training opportunities....

We investigate how firms adjust to demand shocks when wages and employment determination are regulated. Using firm-level data for the Italian metal engineering industry from 2009 to 2021, we estimate the elasticity of the wage bill to changes in firm's real sales. We disentangle the effect on...

Using register data, we document that the average German labor market, defined by hires in combinations of 3-digit occupations, requirement levels, and commuting zones, is highly concentrated (HHI=0.257). By EU antitrust thresholds, 56 percent of these labor markets feature moderate or high...

This policy brief draws on the findings of Tverdostup et al. (2025) to examine Austrian firms' responses to labour shortages through automation and migration. Like many European nations, Austria has been grappling with labour shortages over the past decade. These shortages have been influenced...

Labour shortages in Europe have led firms to adopt two key strategies: automation and the employment of migrants. This study empirically examines the relationship between robot adoption and immigrant labour (differentiated by region of origin and education level) in Austrian firms using a novel...

How do firms adjust their labor demand when a female employee takes temporary leave after childbirth? Using Austrian administrative data, we compare firms with and without a birth event and exploit policy reforms that significantly altered leave durations. We find that (i) firms adjust hiring,...

As technological advances accelerate and labour demands shift, the ability of workers to reallocate across occupations will be crucial for shaping labour market dynamics, inequality, and effective policy design. In this paper, we develop a tractable equilibrium model of the labour market that...

The employment share of legal services in the U.S. more than doubled during 1970–1990, in stark contrast to stability during 1850–1970 and after 1990. The relative wage of lawyers and law firm partners also doubled between 1970 and 1990. We argue that this demand shift was driven by...

Industrial policies are widespread, but evidence on their workforce effects remains limited. We present novel evidence on the impact of EU technology subsidies on employment and skill demand in Finnish SMEs, 1994-2018. The subsidies fund new machinery, including robots and CNC machines....

Do employers seek to attract individuals with more education because it enhances human capital or because it signals higher levels of pre-existing traits? We experimentally vary master's degree completion rates on applicant résumés and examine how this influences candidates' desirability and...

Do employers seek to attract individuals with more education because it enhances human capital or because it signals higher levels of pre-existing traits? We experimentally vary master’s degree completion rates on applicant résumés and examine how this influences candidates’ desirability...

Bangladesh has made notable developmental progress over the past two decades. Economic growth has been among the top 10 percent globally, and poverty has been reduced by 80 percent over the same period. Exports also saw a dramatic jump from US 6.5 billion dollars in 2000 to US 57.5 billion...

We evaluate the influence on the skill premium of the task content of jobs by exploiting the text data from online job ads covering 2009-2018 (over 189,000 ads) published by one of the leading Chilean online job portals (www.trabajando.com). Our analysis tests the expected complementarity...

Do employers seek to attract individuals with more education because it enhances human capital or because it signals higher levels of pre-existing traits? We experimentally vary master's degree completion rates on applicant r'esum'es and examine how this influences candidates' desirability and...

This paper examines the impact of varying COVID-19 exposure levels on local labour demand in Italy during the first years of the pandemic. Using a dose-response framework and province-level monthly data on online job postings (NUTS3), we find a predominantly non-linear, negative relationship...

We test whether firms react to changes in the wages and size of their competitors. We use a unique institutional feature of public procurement auctions in Brazil: the moment in which the auction ends is random. For close auctions, winner and runner-up are as good as randomly assigned. We first...

Using a unique combination of Austrian administrative data, we show that start-ups' search and hiring decisions matter for their business success. Firms that report vacancies to the Public Employment Service in the early stage of their existence stay longer in the market and grow stronger....

Despite their importance for the success of firms, the job prospects of the unemployed and overall unemployment, the factors that determine firms' decisions to report vacancies to the Public Employment Service and to hire the unemployed are largely unexplored. We address this research gap by...

We analyze explicit age discrimination in hiring decisions and job seekers' responses in the Chinese labor market, using a large-scale dataset of job postings with ad-level group characteristics of applicants. In nearly 48% of postings, employers explicitly exclude certain age groups, with...

How do firms adjust their labor demand when a female employee takes temporary leave after childbirth? Using Austrian administrative data, we compare firms with and without a birth event and exploit policy reforms that significantly altered leave durations. We find that (i) firms adjust hiring,...

The job finding rate declines with the duration of unemployment, but the relative importance of workers' search behavior and employers' recruitment behavior remains unclear. We use monthly search diaries from Swiss public employment offices to shed new light on this issue. Search diaries record...

This paper investigates the economic and societal impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the public sector, focusing on its potential to enhance productivity and mitigate labour shortages. Employing detailed administrative data and novel occupational exposure measures, we simulate future...

This paper examines the impact of automation investments on employment dynamics and workforce composition using administrative data from Portugal. I exploit the lumpiness of automation imports in a difference-in-differences event study design. My results show that automation creates jobs in...

This paper analyses changes in the speed of labour demand for new hires in response to the lockdowns that were repeatedly put in place to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. It tests whether the uncertainty-reducing effect of similar lockdowns occurring in quick succession increased the...

This study analyzes the mechanisms by which short-time work (STW) schemes affect firm's employment adjustments, using establishment-level data during the Great Recession from Japan. The findings show that STW leads to a decrease in both hiring and separations, with no significant positive effect...

Contractions in credit supply can lead firms to reduce their level of employment, yet little is known about how these shocks affect the composition of firms' employees and outcomes at the worker level. This paper investigates how bank distress affects credit provision and its effects on...

Artificial intelligence and associated technology advances have progressively diffused from routine tasks to non-routine tasks, causing disruptions in the labour market. In this work, we study the effect of automation on the labour market outcomes for low-skilled and high-skilled workers. We use...

This report provides updated evidence on the persistence of labour shortages amid declining levels of labour market slack in the EU and at Member State level. This serves as a background to the main focus of the report, which is on organisational policies aimed at attracting workers to...