Job Separation Research Articles

Are Labor Market Indicators Telling the Truth? Role of Measurement Error in the U.S. Current Population Survey

Labor market indicators are critical for policymakers, but measurement error in labor force survey data is known to be substantial. In this paper, I quantify the implications of classification errors in the U.S. Current Population Survey (CPS), in which respondents misreport their true labor force status. Once I correct for measurement error using a latent variable approach, the unemployment rate is on average 0.8 percentage points (ppts) higher than the official unemployment rate, with a maximum of 2.0 ppts higher between 1996 and 2018. This paper further quantifies the contributions to business-cycle fluctuations in the unemployment rate from job separation, job finding, and participation. Correcting for misclassification changes previous studies' results about the contributions of these transition probabilities: job separation accounts for more of the unemployment fluctuations, while participation accounts for fewer. The methodology I propose can be applied to any other labor force survey in which labor force status is observed for three periods.

The Effects of the Dependent Health Insurance Coverage Mandates on Fathers’ Job Mobility and Compensation

Due to the low rates of health insurance coverage among young adults, some state governments began mandating health insurance companies to allow adult children to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans. First implemented in 1995, these mandates aimed to increase insurance coverage among young adults. In 2010, the federal government enacted a more comprehensive version of the dependent coverage mandate as part of the Affordable Care Act. These state- and federal-level efforts increased insurance rates for young adults, but they might have also come with unintended consequences for parents. Parents who placed a high value on health insurance for their young adult children might be reluctant to leave jobs with employer-provided health insurance, and employers might offset the mandate-incurred health care costs by reducing other types of employee benefits or earnings. To assess the extent of such consequences, I study the effects of both the state- and federal-dependent health insurance mandates on fathers’ voluntary job separation rates (job-lock and job-push) and changes in their compensation. I observe a significant decrease in the likelihood of voluntary job separation among eligible working fathers aged 45–64 and find weak evidence that the mandates reduced certain fathers’ total monetary compensation.

Specific Capital, Firm Insurance, and the Dynamics of the Postgraduate Wage Premium

This paper examines how specific human capital affects labour turnover and real wage cyclicality in a frictional labour market. I develop an equilibrium search model with long-term contracts and imperfect monitoring of worker effort. Imperfect monitoring creates a moral hazard problem that requires firms to pay efficiency wages. The optimal contract implies that more specific capital reduces job separation, thereby alleviating the moral hazard and increasing wage stability over the business cycle. I apply this model to explain novel stylised facts about the cyclicality of the postgraduate-undergraduate wage premium. Postgraduate degree holders experience lower cyclical variation in real wages than those with undergraduate degrees. This effect is significant for workers with a long tenure, but not for new hires. Moreover, postgraduates have more specific human capital than undergraduates. Estimates reveal that specific capital can explain the educational gaps both in labour turnover and in real wage cyclicality.

Job-to-Job Flows and the Consequences of Job Separations

Job-to-Job Flows and the Consequences of Job Separations

Voluntary Job Separations and Traditional Versus Flexible Workplace Saving Plans: Evidence from Canada

This paper provides new insights into the longstanding empirical issue of whether the type of workplace saving plan (a registered pension plan or RPP, a group registered retirement savings plan or group RRSP, and a hybrid arrangement of the two) affects employee voluntary job separations. We use a Canadian employerA¢â‚¬â€œemployee matched dataset that provides information on both job transitions and the types of workplace saving plans being held by employees and offered by employers. This dataset allows us to control for employee self-selection and firm fixed effects. The standard prediction from implicit contract theory suggests that traditional pensions reduce quit rates but flexible plans have little effect due to their portability. The results are partially consistent with this prediction. Implications of these findings for current public policy are discussed.

The Detrimental Effect of Job Protection on Employment: Evidence from France

According to French law, employers have to pay at least six months salary to employees whose seniority exceeds two years in case of unfair dismissal. We show, relying on data, that this regulation entails a hike in severance payments at two-year seniority which induces a significant rise in the job separation rate before the two-year threshold and a drop just after. The layoff costs and its procedural component are evaluated thanks to the estimation of a search and matching model which reproduces the shape of the job separation rate. We find that total layoff costs increase with seniority and are about four times higher than the expected severance payments at two years of seniority. Counterfactual exercises show that the fragility of low-seniority jobs implies that layoff costs reduce the average job duration and increase unemployment for a wide set of empirically relevant parameters.

Retirement Savings Adequacy in U.S. Defined Contribution Plans

We evaluate retirement savings adequacy using a large panel of U.S. workers with a 401(k) account. We model medical expenditures, longevity, investment risk, and the likelihood of withdrawals due to hardship, job separation, and reaching age 59 1/2. Based on their current account balances, income, saving, and investment behavior, three in four workers in our sample are not saving enough for retirement. The dispersion is related to plan features, account balances, but also worker saving behavior. A bequest motive, lower housing equity, higher risk aversion, lower discount rates or lower future returns worsen the shortfall. We examine various counterfactual policy interventions.

Personal and Contextual Factors Associated With Successful Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Outcomes

Some individuals with disabilities have relatively better labor outcomes than others. If vocational rehabilitation (VR) counselors can better understand what factors are correlated with positive outcomes, they could better identify what clients are at risk for poor outcomes and then intervene early to improve chances for success. Unfortunately, until recently VR survey and administrative data have had insufficient information to investigate these questions. We use a survey of 932 Ohio VR clients combined with administrative earnings data to examine the barriers and facilitators associated with employment and earnings outcomes. The survey data are from the 2014 Survey of Disability and Employment, a survey of VR applicants in three states. We compare VR case status and earnings through 2016, by demographics, functional limitation status, employment history and attitudes, and reasons stated for not working in the survey. We find that about 25% of survey respondents exited the program employed or had at least one quarter of average monthly earnings above the Social Security Administration’s substantial gainful activity amount. Pain, depression or anxiety, longer duration of job separation, personal and familial attitudes about work, and not working because of personal and health reasons were associated with poorer outcomes among survey respondents.

Unemployment insurance and the labor market

The existing literature assumes that unemployment insurance (UI) affects the labor market through the job finding rate of eligible workers. Recent research has started to broaden the perspective. In this paper, I show evidence for UI effects through three other margins: (i) search externalities; (ii) take-up of other welfare state programs; and (iii) job separations. The evidence suggests that the analysis of optimal UI should take a more comprehensive view of how UI affects the labor market.

Do Job Destruction Shocks Matter in the Theory of Unemployment

Because the data show that market tightness is not orthogonal to unemployment, this paper identifies the many empirical difficulties caused by adopting the free entry of vacancies assumption in the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides (DMP) framework. Relaxing the free entry assumption and using Simulated Method of Moments (SMM) finds the vacancy creation process is less than infinitely elastic. Because a recession-leading job separation shock then causes vacancies to fall as unemployment increases, the ad hoc restriction to zero job separation shocks (to generate Beveridge curve dynamics) becomes redundant. In contrast to standard arguments, the calibrated model finds the job separation process drives unemployment volatility over the cycle. (JEL E24, E32, J24, J63, J64)

Declining labor turnover and turbulence

The rate of job loss has been on a secular decline for the last four decades or longer. Changes in demographics or industry composition do not account for the trend. This paper seeks to identify the possible sources of the decline using a simple search-and-matching model with two types of workers, experienced and inexperienced, where the former type faces a risk of skill loss during unemployment. The calibrated model suggests that a higher risk of skill loss during unemployment results in a lower job separation rate, because workers accept lower wages in exchange for job security. Various other potential hypotheses are also examined.

House Prices and Job Losses

Why are house prices -80% correlated with job losses over the UK business cycle? My paper studies this striking fact together with the strong comovements between house prices and labour market variables in general. First, a regional panel is estimated to quantify the impact of house prices on the unemployment, job finding and job separation rates, whereby rejection rates of planning applications are used as instruments to find exogenous variation in house prices. Second, an orthogonalised VAR is used to estimate the aggregate impact of house price shocks. Both methods confirm the large impact of house price shocks on labour market variables and credit supply. To understand the mechanism, a general equilibrium model with collateral constraints, endogenous job separation and housing shocks is confronted with macroeconomic data via Bayesian methods. The results suggest that shocks to house prices (i) explain about 10% of output fluctuations and about 20% of fluctuations in corporate credit, unemployment and job separation rates via the collateral channel over the forecast horizon, and (ii) were a major cause in triggering the 1990 and 2008 recessions in the UK.

The effects of unions on job flows

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to focus on the role of unions for job flow rates.Design/methodology/approachThe author uses a longitudinal data set emphasizing the importance of the time dimension.FindingsUsing the fixed effects estimator, the author finds that unions decrease the job separation rate and the job finding rate.Originality/valueThe findings support that the implications of the insider-outsider model by Lindbeck and Snower (1986): unions are beneficial for insiders but harm outsiders.

The effects of supply chain disruptions caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake on workers

The Great East Japan Earthquake affected not only local workers employed by establishments that were directly damaged, but also those of their trading partners through supply chain disruptions. I estimate the effect of such indirect shocks to workers on their job separation, inter-industry mobility, geographical relocation, and employment status in the following years. I find that such shocks increased job separation in the study period. This increased job separation did not increase inter-industry mobility, but rather induced relocation to other prefectures. The effect on employment status was mixed: although the self-reported indicator of being affected by the earthquake is significantly correlated with negative outcomes such as high unemployment, the proxy for the production decline at the prefecture-industry level is uncorrelated with employment status. This result implies that people who faced a negative employment shock may have attributed it to the exogenous event, which may cause substantial bias in the self-reported data on the effect of disasters.

A study on the Factors Affecting Job Separation by Middle and Old aged Self-Employed using KLoSA Panel

이 연구에서는 중고령 자영업자를 대상으로 일자리 이탈 시점 및 일자리 이탈에 영향을 미치는 요인을 분석하고자 하였다. 고령화연구조사(KLoSA) 2006년 1차 조사대상자 중 자영업 시작 시기가 40세 이상인 684명을 대상으로 2014년 5차 조사 시기까지의 자료를 활용하여 콕스비례위험모형을 활용하였다. 이 연구의 주요 결론을 제시하면 다음과 같다. 첫째, 2005년 자영업을 운영하던 중고령 자영업자의 일자리 지속기간은 평균 15.5년으로 나타났으며 전체 684명 중 214명(31.3%)의 자영업자가 조사기간 내에 일자리를 이탈한 것으로 분석되었다. 둘째, 개인적 특성에서 성별, 창업 시 연령, 교육수준이 중고령 자영업자의 일자리 이탈에 유의미하게 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 여성일 때, 창업 시 연령이 많을 때, 대학 이상의 학력일 때 자영업 이탈에 대한 위험이 증가하였다. 셋째, 자영업 특성에서 업종과 직무만족이 중고령 자영업자의 일자리 이탈에 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 농림어업보다 숙박 및 음식업에 종사할 경우, 자영업에 만족하는 정도가 낮을수록 자영업 이탈에 대한 위험이 크게 나타났다. 이러한 결론을 바탕으로 다음과 같은 시사점을 제시하였다. 첫째, 여성 중고령 자영업자와 60대 이후에 자영업을 시작하는 고령 창업자에 대한 지원전략을 수립할 필요가 있다. 둘째, 진입장벽이 낮은 업종에서 창업하기보다 자신의 적성 및 경력을 활용하여 다양한 분야로 진출할 수 있도록 지원할 필요가 있다. 셋째, 노동환경에서 직무만족을 증진할 수 있도록 돕는 정책개발이 필요하며, 특히 고학력 자영업자에게는 자영업에 의한 다양한 보상에 만족할 수 있도록 할 필요가 있다.The purpose of this study was to analyze the factors influencing of separation and the time of separation for middle and old aged self-employed workers. The cox proportional hazards model was used in the first survey of KLoSA, 684 persons who were over 40 years old in 2006, using data up to the 5th period of 2014. The main findings of this study are as follows. First, the average duration of job for middle and old aged self-employed workers in 2005 was 15.5years. Of the total 684 workers, 214(31.3%) person was found to have lost their job during survey period. Second, gender, age at start up, and education level have significant effects on job separation of them. When women, when they were older at start up, when they were graduate the university or higher, increased their risk of leaving their businesses. Third, in the characteristic of their work, the type of job and job satisfaction were found to affect to job desertion. When people are engaged in accommodation and food business rather than agriculture and forestry fishery, when the satisfaction of the work is lower, the risk was high. Based on these conlusions, the following implications are suggested. First, it is necessary to establish a support strategy for female middle-aged and old self-employed and older workers who start their own business after their 60s. Second, it is necessary to support them to enter into various fields by utilizing their own aptitude and experience rather than establishing them in industries with low entry barriers. Third, it is necessary to develop policies to help improve job satisfaction in the working environment. In particular, it is necessary to ensure that high educated self-employed workers are satisfied with various compensations by self-employed.

Unemployment Insurance and the Labor Market

The existing literature assumes that unemployment insurance (UI) affects the labor market through the job finding rate of eligible workers. I argue that this focus is too narrow. I show evidence for UI effects through three other margins: (i) search externalities; (ii) takeup of other welfare state programs; and (iii) job separations. This suggests that the analysis of optimal UI should take a more comprehensive view of how UI affects the labor market.

Job Separation and Life Satisfaction

Job Separation and Life Satisfaction

Job Displacement, Unemployment, and Crime: Evidence from Danish Microdata and Reforms

This paper estimates the individual impact of a worker’s job loss on his/her criminal activity. Using a matched employer-employee longitudinal data set on unemployment, crime, and taxes for all residents in Denmark, the paper builds each worker’s timeline of job separation, unemployment, and crime. The paper focuses on displaced workers: high-tenure workers who lose employment during a mass-layoff event at any point between 1990 and 1994 (inclusive). Initial local industrial specialization suggests that the growth of manufacturing imports and the Nordic financial crisis in the early 1990s explain a significant share of mass layoffs. Placebo tests display no evidence of trends in crime prior to worker separation. Using Denmark’s introduction of the Act on an Active Labor Market at the end of 1993, we estimate the impacts of activation and of a reduction in benefit duration on crime: crime is lower during active benefits than during passive benefits and spikes at the end of benefit eligibility. We use policy-induced shifts in the kink formula relating prior earnings to unemployment benefits to estimate the separate impacts of labor income and unemployment benefits on crime: the results suggest that unemployment benefits do not significantly offset the impact of labor income losses on crime.

Zooming the Ins and Outs of the U.S. Unemployment with a Wavelet Lens

To better understand unemployment dynamics it is key to assess the role played by job creation and job destruction. Although the U.S. case has been studied extensively, the importance of job finding and employment exit rates to unemployment variability remains unsettled. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this debate by adopting a novel lens, wavelet analysis. We resort to wavelet analysis to unveil time- and frequency-varying features regarding the contribution of the job finding and job separation rates for the U.S. unemployment rate dynamics. Drawing on this approach, we are able to reconcile some apparently contradictory findings reported in previous literature. We find that the job finding rate is more influential for the overall unemployment behavior but the job separation rate also plays a critical role, especially during recessions.

Credit and Firm-Level Volatility of Employment

We study a firm dynamics model where access to credit improves the bargaining position of firms with workers and increases the incentive to hire. To evaluate the importance of the bargaining channel for the hiring decisions of firms, we estimate the model structurally using data from Compustat and Capital IQ. We find that the bargaining channel contributes to about 5.7% of variation in firm-level employment. We also evaluate the contribution of different types of firm-level shocks to employment volatility and find that credit shocks contribute to about 8%, revenue shocks to 48% and job separation shocks to 44%.