Labor Market Fluidity and Economic Performance

摘要: U.S. labor markets became much less fluid in recent decades. Job reallocation rates fell more than a quarter after 1990, and worker 2000. The declines cut across states, industries demographic groups defined by age, gender education. Younger educated workers had especially large declines, as did the retail sector. A shift to older businesses, an aging workforce, policy developments that suppress all contributed fluidity declines. Drawing on previous work, we argue reduced has harmful consequences for productivity, real wages employment. To quantify effects of intensity employment, estimate regression models exploit low frequency variation over time within using state-level changes population composition other variables instruments. We find positive young educated. Similar estimates obtain when dropping data from Great Recession its aftermath. These results suggest economy faced serious impediments high employment well before Recession, sustained is unlikely return without restoring market fluidity.