Who fares worse in an economic downturn, low- or high-paying firms? Different answers to this question imply very different consequences for the costs of recessions. Using U.S. employer-employee data, we find that employment growth at low-paying firms is less cyclically sensitive. High-paying...

Using panel data on individuals from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we find that employed individuals who were affected by the increases in the federal minimum wage in 1979 and 1980 were 3 to 4% less likely to be employed a year later, even after accounting for the fact that workers...

In Silicon Valley's computer cluster, skilled employees are reported to move rapidly between competing firms. This job-hopping facilitates the reallocation of resources towards firms with superior innovations, but it also creates human capital externalities that reduce incentives to invest in...

The high pace of reallocation across producers is pervasive in the U.S. economy. Evidence shows this high pace of reallocation is closely linked to productivity. While these patterns hold on average, the extent to which the reallocation dynamics in recessions are "cleansing" is an open question....

There remains considerable debate in both the theoretical and empirical literature about the differences in the cyclical dynamics of firms by firm size. Some have hypothesized that small firms are more sensitive to cycles while others have posited that larger firms are more sensitive....

This paper presents a new approach to the measurement of the effects of spatial mismatch that takes advantage of matched employer-employee administrative data integrated with a person-specific job accessibility measure, as well as demographic and neighborhood characteristics. The basic...

Understanding the nature and magnitude of resource reallocation, particularly as it relates to productivity growth, is important both because it affects how we model and interpret aggregate productivity dynamics, and also because market structure and institutions may affect the reallocation's...

We study the variability of business growth rates in the U.S. private sector from 1976 onwards. To carry out our study, we exploit the recently developed Longitudinal Business Database (LBD), which contains annual observations on employment and payroll for all U.S. businesses. Our central...

We measure job-filling rates and recruiting intensity per vacancy at the national and industry levels from January 2001 to September 2011 using data from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Construction makes up less than 5 percent of employment but accounts for more than 40 percent of...

Many theoretical models of labor market search imply a tight link between worker flows (hires and separations) and job gains and losses at the employer level. Partly motivated by these theories, we exploit establishment-level data from U.S. sources to study the relationship between worker flows...