This paper discusses why redundant skilled workers may be reluctant to accept interim unskilled jobs. If skilled work is more satisfying or less arduous for highly productive workers, then such workers invest more in moving quickly between skilled jobs. Thus, high productivity workers tend to...

First, the author reestimates a familiar model of quits which emphasizes cyclical variations in employee willingness to search. While proxies for the willingness to search appear unimportant determinants of the quit rate, a proxy for the probability of a job offer (vacancy rates) , which is...