Since the end of the Great Recession in mid-2009, the unemployment rate has recovered slowly, falling by only one percentage point from its peak. We find that the lackluster labor market recovery can be traced in large part to weakness in aggregate demand; only a small part seems attributable to...

Using data from the Current Population Survey from 1980 through 2010 we examine what drives variation and cyclicality in the growth rate of real wages over time. We employ a novel decomposition technique that allows us to divide the time series for median weekly earnings growth into the part...

Conventional analyses of cyclical fluctuations in the labor market ascribe a minor role to the labor force participation margin. In contrast, a flows-based decomposition of the variation in labor market stocks reveals that transitions at the participation margin account for around one-third of...

Over the past quarter century, labor’s share of income in the United States has trended downwards, reaching its lowest level in the postwar period after the Great Recession. Detailed examination of the magnitude, determinants and implications of this decline delivers five conclusions. First,...

We discuss the magnitude of and reasons for the shift in the Beveridge curve in the U.S. since the Great Recession and argue that skill mismatch and the extension of unemployment insurance benefits likely have played a nontrivial role in this shift. We then introduce a method to estimate fitted...

The negative relationship between the unemployment rate and the job openings rate, known as the Beveridge curve, has been relatively stable in the U.S. over the last decade. Since the summer of 2009, however, the U.S. unemployment rate has hovered between 9.4 and 10.1 percent in spite of firms...

I introduce a method that combines data from the U.S. Current Population Survey, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, and state-level Job Vacancy Surveys to construct annual estimates of the number of job openings in the U.S. in the Spring by industry and occupation. I present these estimates...

We show that the existence of downward nominal wage rigidities bends the short-run wage Phillips curve. We introduce a model of monetary policy with downward nominal wage rigidities and show that both the slope and curvature of the Phillips curve depend on the level of inflation and the extent...

The U.S. economy is recovering from the financial crisis and ensuing deep recession, but the unemployment rate has remained stubbornly high. Some have argued that the persistent elevation of unemployment relative to historical norms reflects the fact that the shocks that hit the economy were...

U.K. data from 1993-2012 suggest that in economic downturns a smaller fraction of unemployed workers change their career when starting a new job. The proportion of total hires involving a career change also drops. This implies that career changes decline during recessions. The results indicate...