Unemployment Flows Research Articles

Job Applications and Labour Market Flows

Abstract Job applications have risen over time, yet job-finding rates remain unchanged. Meanwhile, separations have declined. We argue that increased applications raise the probability of a good match rather than the probability of job-finding. Using a search model with multiple applications and costly information, we show that when applications increase, firms invest in identifying good matches, reducing separations. Concurrently, increased congestion and selectivity over which offer to accept temper increases in job-finding rates. Our framework contains testable implications for changes in offers, acceptances, reservation wages, applicants per vacancy, and tenure, objects that enable it to generate the trends in unemployment flows.

Measuring Job Loss during the Pandemic Recession in Real Time with Twitter Data

We present an indicator of job loss derived from Twitter data, based on a fine-tuned neural network with transfer learning to classify if a tweet is job-loss related or not. We show that our Twitter-based measure of job loss is well-correlated with and predictive of other measures of unemployment available in the official statistics and with the added benefits of real-time availability and daily frequency. These findings are especially strong for the period of the Pandemic Recession, when our Twitter indicator continues to track job loss well but where other real-time measures like unemployment insurance claims provided an imperfect signal of job loss. Additionally, we find that our Twitter job loss indicator provides incremental information in predicting official unemployment flows in a given month beyond what weekly unemployment insurance claims offer.

Heterogeneity in labor mobility and unemployment flows across countries

Empirical studies of labor-market flows suggest cross-country differences in long-run aggregate unemployment inflows and outflows of a strikingly large magnitude. The canonical search-and-matching framework of Mortensen and Pissarides (1994, 1999b; the MP model) features small elasticities of steady-state unemployment flows with respect to firing costs, at odds with the idea that labor-market institutions such as employment protection policies are a primary driver of this variation. This paper shows that introducing permanent match-quality heterogeneity in the standard MP model substantially amplifies these elasticities. It then develops a quantitative search model with worker and job heterogeneity consistent with U.S. worker-flow data. This model implies that employment protection differences plausibly account for most of the long-run unemployment-flow variation across high-income countries. In sharp contrast, shutting down heterogeneity implies that large changes in matching efficiency are required to explain the same cross-country variation.

OUTLINES OF UNEMPLOYMENT IN CRISIS SITUATIONS IN THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA

The current socio-economic situation in the Republic of Armenia is characterized by instability, insufficient investments in the field of economy, science and education and low living standards of the population. The latter aggravates the situation both in the labor market and in the field of labor migration in crisis conditions. Along with that, it is necessary to reduce the deformation of social and labor relations, which leads to the reduction of the possibility of exploitation of the labor force, in particular, due to low wages, noncompliance with labor protection requirements and norms, and its use. It is important to study the dynamics of the unemployed, unemployment in periods of economic ups and downs, as well as use these indicators to predict the unemployment rate, follow business cycles. Furthermore, the analysis of unemployment flows together with other labor market indicators can help to understand the causes of the labor market situation and prepare policy recommendations. To more fully understand the variation in the unemployment rate, it is important to estimate the variation in the transition rate from employment to unemployment and vice versa. The purpose of the article is to study the characteristics of unemployment in the Republic of Armenia under the conditions of Covid 19, which can contribute to the adoption of recommendations for ensuring labor market balance. The theoretical and methodological basis for the study is the works related to the macro level, conference articles, statistical publications. Findings from the study, analysis, and synthesis were used to draw conclusions about the main findings of the study.

A cross-country study of skills and unemployment flows

Using an international survey that directly assesses the cognitive skills of the adult population, I study the relation between skills and unemployment flows across 37 countries. Depending on the specifically assessed domain, I document that skills have an unconditional correlation with the log-risk-ratio of exiting to entering unemployment of 0.65–0.68 across the advanced and skill-abundant countries in the sample. The relation is remarkably robust and it is unlikely to be due to reverse causality. I do not find evidence that this positive relation extends to the seven relatively less advanced and less skill-abundant countries in the sample: Peru, Ecuador, Indonesia, Mexico, Chile, Turkey and Kazakhstan.

Asymmetric dynamics between uncertainty and unemployment flows in the United States

Abstract This paper examines how different uncertainty measures affect the unemployment level, inflow, and outflow in the U.S. across all states of the business cycle. We employ linear and nonlinear causality-in-quantile tests to capture a complete picture of the effect of uncertainty on U.S. unemployment. To verify whether there are any common effects across different uncertainty measures, we use monthly data on four uncertainty measures and on U.S. unemployment from January 1997 to August 2018. Our results corroborate the general predictions from a search and matching framework of how uncertainty affects unemployment and its flows. Fluctuations in uncertainty generate increases (upper-quantile changes) in the unemployment level and in the inflow. Conversely, shocks to uncertainty have a negative impact on U.S. unemployment outflow. Therefore, the effect of uncertainty is asymmetric depending on the states (quantiles) of U.S. unemployment and on the adopted unemployment measure. Our findings suggest state-contingent policies to stabilize the unemployment level when large uncertainty shocks occur.

Unemployment flows, participation, and the natural rate of unemployment: Evidence from turkey

We use a parsimonious unobserved components model with flow rates to estimate a time-varying unemployment rate trend for Turkey. Our approach is grounded in the modern theory of labor market search. This trend estimate yields a level that the unemployment rate would converge to in the absence of cyclical shocks that move different flow rates away from their underlying trends. By the end of 2018, the unemployment rate trend for Turkey stood at 12 percent, gradually increasing since the end of the global recession. The key drivers of the unemployment rate trend have been rising separation and unemployment exit rate trends in the first decade of our sample period. Since 2012, these trends have stagnated somewhat, but the labor force participation rate has continued trending up.

Finance and Jobs: How Financial Markets and Prudential Regulation Shape Unemployment Dynamics

This article explores the impact of financial market regulation on jobs. It argues that understanding the impact of finance on labor markets is key to an understanding of the trade-off between economic stability and financial sector growth. The article combines information on labor market flows with indicators of financial market development and reforms to assess the implications of financial markets on employment dynamics directly, using information from the International Labour Organization (ILO) datatabse on unemployment flows. On the basis of a matching model of the labor market, it analyses the economic, institutional, and policy determinants of unemployment in- and out-flows. Against a set of basic controls, we present evidence regarding the relationship between financial sector development and reforms and their impact on unemployment dynamics. Using scenario analysis, the article demonstrates the importance of broad financial sector re-regulation to stabilize unemployment inflows and to promote faster employment growth. In particular, we find that encompassing financial sector regulation, had it been in place prior to the global financial crisis in 2008, would have helped a faster recovery in jobs.

Dinámica de los flujos de entrada y salida del desempleo en Chile 1996-2016

The present paper investigates the dynamics in the chilean labor market during 1996 and 2016. It estimates the unemployment flows following Shimer (2012) in order to characterize labor market variables in the bussisnes cycle. According to our results recessionary increases in unemployment are driven by the outflow from unemployment rather than the inflow. Using structural vector autorregresive analysis (SVAR), we estimate a model to identify several shocks that affect the economy and labor market. An aggregate supply shock generates greater variance in the inflow also shows grater persistence to the variety of shocks examined; meanwhile an aggregate demand shock generates greater variance in the outflow.

Are House Prices Responsible for Unemployment Persistence?

The paper analyses the ambiguous role of house prices and housing investment for unemployment dynamics. Whereas traditional models see an increase in house prices as a dynamic multiplier that contributes positively to business cycle swings, the paper considers additional transmission mechanisms via the competitiveness channel (wages) and productivity. As house prices rise, wages tend to follow in order to make up for the loss in real disposable income, which limits employment creation. In addition, with rising house prices, the relative size of the construction sector – a low-productivity industry – tends to increase, lowering aggregate productivity growth, further dampening competitiveness. The paper estimates a stylised dynamic general equilibrium model with unemployment flows. Introducing different transmission mechanisms through which the housing market influences labour and macroeconomic dynamics, the size and direction of the housing market channel is being analysed. The estimation results show that housing shocks can have long-lasting negative effects on employment even though a housing boom can generate a short-lived stimulus on growth and employment. The paper also offers some policy advice simulating housing shocks under different types of structural reforms and macro-prudential regulation.

A Cross-Country Study of Workers' Skills and Unemployment Flows

Using an international survey that directly assesses the cognitive skills of the adult population, I study the relation between skills and unemployment flows across 37 countries. Depending on the specifically assessed domain, I document that skills have an unconditional correlation with the log-risk-ratio of exiting to entering unemployment of 0.65–0.68 across the advanced and skill-abundant countries in the sample. The relation is remarkably robust and it is unlikely to be due to reverse causality. I do not find evidence that this positive relation extends to the seven relatively less advanced and less skill-abundant countries in the sample: Peru, Ecuador, Indonesia, Mexico, Chile, Turkey and Kazakhstan.

The Beveridge Curve: A Survey

Important progress has been made in economists' understanding of the Beveridge curve, from its measurement to its expression in canonical labor market models. Yet enduring puzzles remain. Chief among these are the empirical role of vacancies in the recruitment process; the amplitude, comovement, and persistence of cyclical unemployment–vacancy dynamics; and the sources of lateral shifts in the Beveridge curve. The synthesis of these themes identifies several priorities for ongoing research, including the role of entry costs into vacancy creation in shaping Beveridge dynamics; the cyclicality of search intensity, both off and on the job, and its relation to participation and job-to-job transitions; the theory and measurement of mismatch; and the sources of hysteresis in unemployment flows. (JEL E24, J63, J64)

Lessons for Forecasting Unemployment in the United States: Use Flow Rates, Mind the Trend

This paper evaluates the ability of autoregressive models, professional forecasters, and models that incorporate unemployment flows to forecast the unemployment rate. We pay particular attention to flows-based approaches – the more reduced-form approach of Barnichon and Nekarda (2012) and the more structural method in Tasci (2012) – to generalize whether data on unemployment flows are useful in forecasting the unemployment rate. We find that any approach that considers unemployment inflow and outflow rates performs well in the near term. Over longer forecast horizons, Tasci (2012) appears to be a useful framework even though it was designed to be mainly a tool to uncover long-run labor market dynamics such as the "natural" rate. Its usefulness is amplified at specific points in the business cycle when the unemployment rate is away from the longer-run natural rate. Judgmental forecasts from professional economists tend to be the single best predictor of future unemployment rates. However, combining those guesses with flows-based approaches yields significant gains in forecasting accuracy.

Lessons for Forecasting Unemployment in the U.S.: Use Flow Rates, Mind the Trend

This paper evaluates the ability of autoregressive models, professional forecasters, and models that leverage unemployment flows to forecast the unemployment rate. We pay particular attention to flows-based approaches — the more reduced-form approach of Barnichon and Nekarda (2012) and the more structural method in Tasci (2012) — to generalize whether data on unemployment flows is useful in forecasting the unemployment rate. We find that any approach that leverages unemployment inflow and outfl ow rates performs well in the near term. Over longer forecast horizons, Tasci (2012) appears to be a useful framework, even though it was designed to be mainly a tool to uncover long-run labor market dynamics such as the “natural” rate. Its usefulness is amplified at specific points in the business cycle when unemployment rate is away from the longer-run natural rate. Judgmental forecasts from professional economists tend to be the single best predictor of future unemployment rates. However, combining those guesses with flows based approaches yields significant gains in forecasting accuracy.

Unemployment Flows, Participation, and the Natural Rate for Turkey

This paper measures flow rates into and out of unemployment for Turkey and uses them to estimate the unemployment rate trend, that is, the unemployment rate to which the economy converges in the long run.

Understanding unemployment flows

This article reviews the current state of research on unemployment dynamics in macroeconomic models. In particular, it discusses the increasingly widespread use of the labour-market flow approach as implemented via a search and matching process and presents main policy considerations that arise from this approach related to unemployment benefit systems and employment protection. It reviews the implications of the labour-flow approach for dynamic properties of macroeconomic models and discusses policy implications for macroeconomic and labour-market policies. Finally, it presents new evidence on the effectiveness of policies to influence unemployment in- and outflows.

Transitions into Permanent Employment in Spain: An Empirical Analysis for Young Workers

We analyze the Spanish temporary workers� transitions into permanent employment and to what extent those who become unemployed are able to achieve a permanent job. Our focus is placed on the role of the individual�s sequence of temporary contracts on the probability of moving from temporary into permanent employment. We apply multiple-spell duration techniques to a longitudinal dataset of temporary workers obtained from Social Security records for the period 1996-2003. We basically find that even though transitions into permanent employment increase with tenure, temporary jobs do not constitute stepping stones towards permanent employment, since the probability of obtaining a permanent job decreases with repeated temporary jobs. Results also show that individuals with high duration of unemployment flow into permanent work less frequently.

Cyclical Employment and Unemployment Flows in the U.S.

Unemployment in the U.S. has risen dramatically since the start of the recession in December 2007, going from about 6.8 million people in May 2007 to over 14.6 million in June 2010. This is often spoken of as 7.8 million jobs, but this is a terribly misleading view of the issue. The reality is that flows of people and jobs each month are huge -- it would be more correct to say that 4-6 million jobs were lost each month, with a comparable (just slightly lower) number found each month. This paper examines some of the data regularities in the monthly gross flows published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The methodology is to analyze the transition rates and implied steady-state levels of employment and unemployment. This is an approach that, while not commonly used, does provide valuable insights. For example, declines in employment have been largely due to decreased probability of finding a job, with little net impact from changes in the probability of losing a job. Furthermore, in spite of a fall in the u-to-e transition contributing significantly to falling employment, the flow from unemployment to employment actually increased. As another example, changes in the probability of moving between unemployment and not in the labor force (NLF) look like an anti-discouraged worker effect -- during the recession people are more likely to move from NLF to unemployment and less likely to move from unemployment to NLF.

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.

Vacancy Posting, Job Separation and Unemployment Fluctuations

This paper studies the relative importance of the two main determinants of cyclical unemployment fluctuations: vacancy posting and job separation. Using a matching function to model the flow of new jobs, I draw on Shimer's (2007) unemployment flow rates decomposition and find that job separation and vacancy posting respectively account for about 40 and 60 percent of unemployment's variance. When considering higher-order moments, I find that job separation contributes to about 60 percent of unemployment steepness asymmetry, a stylized fact of the jobless rate. Finally, while vacancy posting is, on average, the most important contributor of unemployment fluctuations, the opposite is true around business cycle turning points, when job separation is responsible for most of unemployment movements.