The purpose of this paper is to identify possible sources of the secular decline in the job separation rate over the past four decades. I use a simple labor matching model with two types of workers, experienced and inexperienced, where the former type faces a risk of skill loss during...

(supersedes WP 15-29)The rate of job loss has been on a secular decline for the last four decades or longer. Changes in demographics or industry composition do not account for the trend. This paper seeks to identify possible sources of this decline using a simple labor matching model with two...

Superseded by 18-06. The purpose of this paper is to identify possible sources of the secular decline in the job separation rate over the past four decades. I use a simple labor matching model with two types of workers, experienced and inexperienced, where the former type faces a risk of skill...

Using U.S. Census microdata, the authors show that, on average, workers change occupation and industry less in more densely populated areas. The result is robust to standard demographic controls, as well as to including aggregate measures of human capital and sectoral mix. Analysis of the...

This paper uses CPS gross flow data, adjusted for margin error and time aggregation error, to analyze the business cycle dynamics of separation and job finding rates and to quantify their contributions to overall unemployment variability. Cyclical changes in the separation rate lead those of...

This paper establishes robust cyclical features of the U.S. labor market by estimating VAR models of the job loss rate, job finding rate, and vacancies. To identify the aggregate business cycle shock, the author adopts the agnostic Bayesian identification approach developed by Uhlig (2005) and...

Drawing on CPS data, the authors show that total monthly job loss and hiring among U.S. workers, as well as job loss hazard rates, are strongly countercyclical, while job finding hazard rates are strongly procyclical. They also find that total job loss and job loss hazard rates lead the business...

The purpose of this paper is to identify possible sources of the secular decline in the aggregate job separation rate over the last three decades. The author first shows that aging of the labor force alone cannot account for the entire decline. To explore other sources, he uses a simple labor...

The authors use establishment data from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) to study the micro-level behavior of worker quits and their relation to recruitment and establishment growth. They find that quits decline with establishment growth, playing the most important role at...

In a recent influential paper, Shimer uses CPS duration and gross flow data to draw two conclusions: (1) separation rates are nearly acyclic; and (2) separation rates contribute little to the variability of unemployment. In this paper the authors assert that Shimer's analysis is problematic, for...