Cyclical dynamics in idiosyncratic labor-market risks: Evidence from March CPS 1968–2011

The paper estimates the household labor earning process using the March Current Population Survey 1968–2011. GMM estimates confirm that the results in Storesletten et al. (2004) still hold in a much larger data set over a longer period. The persistent idiosyncratic risk is strongly countercyclical, with an annual auto-correlation equal to .973 and an standard deviation that increases by 72.5% (from .090 to .156) as the macroeconomy moves from peak to trough.