The employment dynamics of different population groups over the business cycle

We examine differences in employment dynamics across population groups using Bayesian vector autoregressions. We document that groups who are particularly strongly affected by business-cycle fluctuations (males, young people, non-whites, the less educated, and workers in blue-collar occupations) also tend to be affected early in the build-up of a boom or bust. We further identify the drivers of the different cyclicalities across population groups. Supply shocks seem to be most important for the heterogeneous employment fluctuations and particularly for the early effects of recessions and booms on the most affected groups. Dynamics in sectoral activity and in hiring rates can help to understand our findings.