Job Destruction Rates Research Articles

Collective bargaining, firm heterogeneity and unemployment

We compare labor market outcomes under firm-level and sector-level bargaining in a one-sector Mortensen-Pissarides economy with firm-specific productivity shocks. Our main theoretical results are two-fold. First, unemployment is lower under firm-level bargaining, due both to a lower job destruction rate and a higher job-finding rate. Key to this result is the interplay between firm heterogeneity and wage compression under sector-level bargaining. Second, introducing efficient opting-out of sector-level agreements suffices to bring unemployment down to its level under decentralized bargaining.

The Recent Decline in Employment Dynamics

In recent years, the rate at which workers and businesses exchange jobs has declined in the United States. Between 1998 and 2010, rates of job creation, job destruction, hiring, and separation declined dramatically, and the rate of job-to-job flows fell by about half. Little is known about the nature and extent of these changes, and even less about their causes and implications. In this paper, we document and attempt to explain the recent decline in employment dynamics. Our empirical work relies on the four leading datasets of quarterly employment dynamics in the United States – the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD), the Business Employment Dynamics (BED), the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), and the Current Population Survey (CPS).We find that changes in the composition of the labor force and of employers explain relatively little of the decline. Exploiting some identities that relate the different measures to each other, we find that job creation and destruction could explain as much of a third of the decline in hires and separations, while job-to-job flows may explain more of the decline. We end our paper with a discussion of different possible explanations and their relative merits.

The Recent Decline in Employment Dynamics

In recent years, the rate at which workers and businesses exchange jobs has declined in the United States. Between 1998 and 2010, rates of job creation, job destruction, hiring, and separation declined dramatically, and the rate of job-to-job flows fell by about half. Little is known about the nature and extent of these changes, and even less about their causes and implications. In this paper, we document and attempt to explain the recent decline in employment dynamics. Our empirical work relies on the four leading datasets of quarterly employment dynamics in the United States – the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD), the Business Employment Dynamics (BED), the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), and the Current Population Survey (CPS). We find that changes in the composition of the labor force and of employers explain relatively little of the decline. Exploiting some identities that relate the different measures to each other, we find that job creation and destruction could explain as much of a third of the decline in hires and separations, while job-to-job flows may explain more of the decline. We end our paper with a discussion of different possible explanations and their relative merits.

Trade Reforms, Foreign Competition, and Labor Market Adjustments in the U.S.

Using data on trade-induced displacements, this paper documents that locations facing more foreign competition in the U.S. have: higher job destruction rates, lower job creation rates, and thereby lower employment rates. In contrast to standard trade theory, a model with variable markups and heterogeneous segmented labor markets is consistent with these facts. Foreign competition has a correlated effect on job destruction and job creation precisely because the most vulnerable locations also have lower productivity. Following an unexpected trade liberalization with limited mobility, employment sharply falls in the worse hit locations while welfare and employment increase in the aggregate.

The impact of regional location factors on job creation, job destruction and employment growth in manufacturing

Regions are exposed to intensive competition to provide the most attractive location conditions for firms and their employees. Therefore, regional employment development depends to a decisive degree on the attractiveness of regional location factors. Based upon the creation of establishment-level panel data from Official Statistics for manufacturing in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany, from 1980 to 1999 this paper gives an empirical analysis of the impact of regional location conditions on regional manufacturing employment growth. In particular, the paper examines whether the impact of regional location conditions on regional net employment growth is driven by the underlying gross components job creation and/or job destruction. The results indicate that lower regional costs of production and a better regional endowment with skilled labour and R&D promote manufacturing employment growth. Thereby, lower costs of production as measured by a lower wage level stimulate employment growth by decreasing gross job destruction, while a better human capital endowment and a higher regional R&D intensity enhance employment growth by higher rates of gross job creation. Regions characterised by a smaller average firm size in manufacturing experienced higher manufacturing employment growth both by higher rates of job creation and lower rates of job destruction. On the other hand population density stimulates job creation as well as job destruction which lead to a zero effect on the scale of net employment change—indicating a compensation effect “behind the scenes”. Otherwise, the analysis reveals the tendency for regional location factors to influence either only gross job creation or only gross job destruction, but seldom both sides at the same time.

How Crowd Funding Solves One of the Biggest Capital Market Gaps in America: Unleashing a Torrent of Growth Capital for Small Private Established Technology Firms

The biggest economic problem in America is the lack of jobs. The rate of job destruction for the past 15 years, mostly in large multi-national corporations, is much greater than the rate of job creation, mostly coming from established technology companies that are over three years old.If the company can stay alive to age 7, it will need another slug of capital, generally less than $1 million, to get the third generation product out the door. If the company can obtain this subsequent round of capital, the rate of job creation is exponential. The number of jobs increases from about 7 workers to about 20.This third round of capital creates the Mother-Lode of new jobs in America. And, it is this third round of funding that will be solved by crowd funding allowed under the JOBS Act.

Can Institutional Reform Reduce Job Destruction and Unemployment Duration? Yes it Can

We read search theory's unemployment equilibrium condition as an Iso-Unemployment Curve(IUC).The IUC is the locus of job destruction rates and expected unemployment durations rendering the same unemployment level. A country's position along the curve reveals its preferences over the destruction-duration mix, while its distance from the origin indicates the unemployment level at which such preferences are satisfied Using a panel of 20 OECD countries over 1985-2008, we find employment protection legislation to have opposing efects on destructions and durations, while the effects of the remaining key institutional factors on both variables tend to reinforce each other. Implementing the right reforms could reduce job destruction rates by about 0.05 to 0.25 percentage points and shorten unemployment spells by around 10 to 60 days. Consistent with this, unemployment rates would decline by between 0.75 and 5.5 percentage points, depending on a country's starting position.

Can Institutional Reform Reduce Job Destruction and Unemployment Duration? Yes it Can

We read search theory's unemployment equilibrium condition as an Iso-Unemployment Curve(IUC).The IUC is the locus of job destruction rates and expected unemployment durations rendering the same unemployment level. A country's position along the curve reveals its preferences over the destruction-duration mix, while its distance from the origin indicates the unemployment level at which such preferences are satisfied Using a panel of 20 OECD countries over 1985-2008, we find employment protection legislation to have opposing efects on destructions and durations, while the effects of the remaining key institutional factors on both variables tend to reinforce each other. Implementing the right reforms could reduce job destruction rates by about 0.05 to 0.25 percentage points and shorten unemployment spells by around 10 to 60 days. Consistent with this, unemployment rates would decline by between 0.75 and 5.5 percentage points, depending on a country's starting position.

Do Those Who Stay Work Less? On the Impact of Emigration on the Measured TFP in Poland

The measured TFP growth in Poland slowed from around 4% in the second half of the 90s to 2% a decade later. This reduction in the growth rate of the Solow residual is argued to reflect the evolution of worker effort and, indirectly, of the labour market within the period. The unobserved worker effort is identified within a structural efficiency wage model with shirking. The model estimates suggest that a reduction in the generosity of the unemployment benefit system and the stabilization of the job destruction rate before 2000 reinforced worker motivation. In turn, the economic revival and the intensification of emigration around the date of the Polish accession to the European Union undermined it. Consequently, a steep increase in worker effort before 2000 temporarily boosted the measured TFP growth. A levelling off and the eventual correction of effort after 2000 depressed the observed TFP growth rates. Around 15% of the estimated decline in GDP tied to an increase in emigration after 2004 can be attributed to negative changes in worker discipline.

Trade liberalization, unemployment, and inequality with endogenous job destruction

In a two sector extension of the Mortensen–Pissarides model of endogenous job destruction, it is shown that trade liberalization increases both job creation and job destruction in the import competing sector and reduces them in the export sector. Since trade liberalization increases unemployment in the import competing sector and reduces it in the export sector, the impact on economy wide unemployment is ambiguous. While job destruction increases upon impact in the import competing sector, there is no immediate decrease in job destruction in the export sector leading to short term spikes in the net job destruction and unemployment rates in response to trade liberalization. Trade liberalization increases intersectoral wage inequality, however, intra-sectoral wage inequality increases in the export sector but decreases in the import competing sector. Finally, a more generous unemployment benefit increases the responsiveness of job destruction to trade liberalization.

Age‐Dependent Employment Protection

This paper examines the age-related design of firing taxes by extending the theory of job creation and job destruction to account for a finite working life-time. We first argue that the potential employment gains related to employment protection are high for older workers, as they are magnified by the proximity to retirement. But higher firing taxes for these workers increase job destruction rates for the younger generations. Furthermore, from a normative standpoint, when firms cannot ex-ante age-direct their search, the impact of each generation of unemployed workers on the average return on vacancies makes the internalization of the search costs for the other generations imperfect through the ex-post Nash bargaining process. We show that the first best age-profile of firing taxes is typically hump-shaped, partially in contradiction with existing policies in some European countries. Taking into account the fact that the human capital of older workers is more specific than general tends to exacerbate these results.

Job Creation, Job Destruction and the Role of Small Firms: Firm-Level Evidence for the UK

Evidence on job creation and destruction for the UK is still limited compared to that available from other countries. What evidence there is refers almost entirely to the manufacturing sector, with the most recent figures referring to the 1980s. There are therefore no recent estimates for the great majority of firms in the UK. In this paper we use firm-level data from 1997-2005 to calculate job creation and destruction rates for almost all sectors, including services. We show that firms in the service sector exhibit much higher rates of job creation and slightly higher rates of job destruction. One-third of new jobs are created by the entry of new firms, while half of lost jobs are destroyed by the exit of firms. Small firms (those with fewer than 100 employees) account for a disproportionately large fraction of job creation and destruction relative to their share of employment. This finding is robust to the definition of firm size used.

Job Creation, Job Destruction and the Role of Small Firms: Firm-Level Evidence for the UK*

Evidence on job creation and destruction for the United Kingdom is limited, dated, and refers almost entirely to the manufacturing sector. We use firm-level data from 1997 to 2008 for almost all sectors, including services, and show that firms in the service sector exhibit much higher rates of job creation, but almost exactly the same rates of job destruction as those in manufacturing. ‘Small’ firms account for a disproportionately large fraction of job creation and destruction relative to their share of employment. Jobs created by small firms are no less likely to persist than those created by large firms.

Monetary policy and the asymmetric job creation and destruction behaviour

This article explores whether monetary policy can account for the asymmetric job creation and job destruction behaviour in the Taiwanese manufacturing and service sectors during the period 1987 to 2003. This article finds evidence for positive steepness in the job destruction rate in the manufacturing sector and negative steepness in the job creation rate in the service sector. This article also finds that the monetary policy (discount rate) can help to explain the asymmetric job creation and job destruction behaviour. Importantly, this article finds that monetary policy stimulated job flow behaviour to a better regime. This evidence suggests that monetary policy may be an efficient instrument in stimulating the labour market in Taiwan.

Layoff taxes and minimum wage: Two complementary public policies

In a matching model in which the job destruction rate and the output are endogenous, we show that the presence of a binding minimum wage prompts firms to choose too risky jobs. Introducing layoff taxes therefore reduces unemployment and improves market efficiency.

Worker Flows and Job Flows: A Quantitative Investigation

This paper studies quantitative properties of a multiple-worker firm search/matching model and investigates how worker transition rates and job flow rates are interrelated. We show that allowing for job-to-job transitions in the model is essential to simultaneously account for the cyclical features of worker transition rates and job flow rates. Important to this result are the distinctions between the job creation rate and the hiring rate and between the job destruction rate and the layoff rate. In the model without job-to-job transitions, these distinctions essentially disappear, thus making it impossible to simultaneously replicate the cyclical features of both labor market flows.

International competitiveness, job creation and job destruction—An establishment-level study of German job flows

This study investigates the impact of international competitiveness on net employment, job creation, job destruction, and gross job flows for a representative sample of German establishments from 1993 to 2005. We find a statistically significant but economically small effect of real exchange rate shocks on employment, comparable to the one found in studies for the United States. However, contrary to the United States, the employment adjustment (among surviving firms) operates mainly through the job creation rather than the job destruction rate. Job destruction occurs essentially through discrete events such as restructuring, outsourcing and bankruptcy. We suggest that these findings are consistent with a highly regulated labor market, in which smooth adjustment is costly and possibly delayed.

Business Volatility, Job Destruction, and Unemployment

Unemployment inflows fell from 4 percent of employment per month in the early 1980s to 2 percent or less by the mid 1990s and thereafter. U.S. data also show a secular decline in the job destruction rate and the volatility of firm-level employment growth rates. We interpret this decline as a decrease in the intensity of idiosyncratic labor demand shocks, a key parameter in search and matching models of unemployment. According to these models, a lower intensity of idiosyncratic shocks produces less job destruction, fewer workers flowing through the unemployment pool and less frictional unemployment. To evaluate the importance of this theoretical mechanism, we relate industry-level unemployment flows from 1977 to 2005 to industry-level indicators for the intensity of idiosyncratic shocks. Unlike previous research, we focus on the lower frequency relationship of job destruction and business volatility to unemployment flows. We find strong evidence that declines in the intensity of idiosyncratic labor demand shocks drove big declines in the incidence and rate of unemployment. This evidence implies that the unemployment rate has become much less sensitive to cyclical movements in the job-finding rate.

Structural changes in job creation and destruction

This paper explores structural changes in job creation and destruction in the U.S. manufacturing sector. The job destruction rate does not reveal any structural breaks. Labor demand restructuring activity in the U.S. is initiated by job creation, not job destruction.

The Indiana Technology Innovation Super Cluster: Creating Jobs in a Mid-Western Regional Economic Environment

The just-so happy story told by global trade proponents that promised that the loss of manufacturing jobs would be made up by the increase in service sector jobs is not supported by the BDS data, and it is just now dawning on state government officials that there is something seriously wrong with their traditional job creation policies based on industrial recruitment. The dirty little secret of job creation and job loss in America is that there are no more big companies to recruit to all the vacant U. S. industrial parks, built on the lure of low cost production and the image of prosperity from the 1950's. Increasing the rate of industrial recruitment tax incentives is not going to change this picture.Understanding the economic malfunction in the American labor markets contains two parts: Why is the rate of job creation in small companies so low and why is the rate of job destruction in older bigger companies so high? Both answers are tied together by a common factor related to how the United States implemented the new global trade policies in the past 20 years.In the absence of economic vitality caused by investments in domestic technology innovation in the formerly integrated national economy, national economic growth strategy shifted to a series of speculative bubbles that did not create the conditions for sustained economic growth for small businesses. Large companies offshored manufacturing production jobs, and small businesses suffered because their regional industrial value chains were destroyed by the way global trade policies offshored the American foundation of innovationAlong with the new innovation park infrastructure, the most important job creation strategy that the EDA could implement is creating the new capital market infrastructure that targets investments to regional innovation opportunities. This is not a task that can be done by the private capital markets themselves because the creation of capital market infrastructure does not generate profits that can be appropriated by private actors.