The aggregate implications of changes in the labour force composition

Abstract

Labour composition by gender, age, and education has undergone dramatic changes over the last half century in the United States. Furthermore, the volatility of total market hours differs systematically between genders, age, and education groups. I develop a large scale business cycle model where these demographic patterns and their transitional dynamics are taken into account and find that demographic change accounts for 30% of the observed changes in aggregate volatility over this period of time. Additionally, these demographic changes are responsible for a significant fraction of the GDP growth observed in the considered period of time.