We examine the effect of the Covid pandemic on willingness to work along both the extensive and intensive margins of labor supply. Special survey questions in the Job Search Supplement of the Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) allow us to elicit information about individuals' desired work...

We use a mix of new and existing data to develop the Aggregate Hours Gap (AHG), a novel measure of labor market underutilization. Our measure differentiates individuals by detailed categories of labor market participation and uses data on their desired work hours as a measure of their potential...

This paper is the first to study vacancies, hires, and vacancy yields at the establishment level in the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, a large sample of U.S. employers. To interpret the data, we develop a simple model that identifies the flow of new vacancies and the job-filling rate...

Unemployment inflows fell from 4 percent of employment per month in the early 1980s to 2 percent or less by the mid 1990s and thereafter. U.S. data also show a secular decline in the job destruction rate and the volatility of firm-level employment growth rates. We interpret this decline as a...

We develop and implement a method to improve estimates of worker flows and job openings based on the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS). Our method involves reweighting the cross-sectional density of employment growth rates in JOLTS to match the corresponding density in the...

New data sources and products developed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of the Census highlight the fluid character of U.S. labor markets. Private-sector job creation and destruction rates average nearly 8% of employment per quarter. Worker flows in the form of hires and...

Using a unique new survey, we study the relationship between search effort and outcomes for employed and non-employed workers. We find that the employed fare better than the non-employed in job search: they receive more offers per application and are offered higher pay even after controlling for...

Using data from the Employment Opportunity Pilot Project, we examine the relationship between the starting wage paid to the worker filling a vacancy, the number of applications attracted by the vacancy, the number of candidates interviewed for the vacancy, and the duration of the vacancy. We...

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...

We discuss how the relative importance of factors that contribute to movements of the U.S. Beveridge curve has changed from 1960 to 2023. We review these factors in the context of a simple flow analogy used to capture the main insights of search and matching theories of the labor market. Changes...