Though the U.S. labor market is justly notorious for high turnover and consequent high unemployment, it also provides stable, near-lifetime employment to an important fraction of the labor force. This paper investigates patterns of job duration by age, race, and sex, with the following major...

New data compel a new view of events in the labor market during a recession. Unemployment rises almost entirely because jobs become harder to find. Recessions involve little increase in the flow of workers out of jobs. Another important finding from new data is that a large fraction of workers...

The labor market occupies center stage in modern theories of fluctuations. The most important phenomenon to explain and understand in a recession is the sharp decline in employment and jump in unemployment. This chapter for the Handbook of Macroeconomics considers explanations based on frictions...