International Trade and Worker Turnover – Empirical Evidence for Germany

Using a linked employer-employee data set for Germany, this paper studies how worker turnover is related to establishments‘ international trade involvement. The descriptive analysis shows that trading establishments have lower worker turnover rates than non-traders, suggesting a higher degree of employment stability. Conditional on an extensive set of control variables, exporting is further associated with a higher net job flow rate, which is almost entirely due to a lower separation rate (particularly for high-skilled workers and transitions into non-employment). In contrast, an increase in import intensity is associated with a lower accession rate (particularly for low-skilled workers and their accessions out of non-employment). These results are more pronounced for smaller establishments, and they partly lose statistical significance once unobservable establishment characteristics are taken into account