Pattern in Regional Labor Market Adjustment: The United States vs. Japan

In this paper I examine regional labor market behavior in the United States and Japan. In contrast with the picture at the aggregate level, Japanese labor markets at the prefectural (regional) level appear to exhibit substantially more persistence than state level labor markets in the United States. The distribution (and positions of regions within the distribution) of wages, unemployment, employment growth, and migration remain remarkably constant in Japan for periods of up to 15 years. Although wages, unemployment, and migration appear to be driven by similar factors in both countries, wages appear to be slightly more sensitive while unemployment is less sensitive to demand shifts in Japan than in the U.S.