IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedfel/y2009ijun5n2009-18.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Jobless recovery redux?

Author

Listed:
  • Mary C. Daly
  • Bart Hobijn
  • Joyce Kwok

Abstract

Although the pace of layoffs appears to be subsiding and the overall economy is showing hints of stabilization, most forecasters expect unemployment to continue to increase in coming months and to recede only gradually as recovery takes hold. In this Economic Letter, we evaluate this projection using data on three labor market indicators: worker flows into and out of unemployment; involuntary part-time employment; and temporary layoffs. We pay particular attention to how these indicators compare with data from previous episodes of recession and recovery. Our analysis generally supports projections that labor market weakness will persist, but our findings offer a basis for even greater pessimism about the outlook for the labor market. Specifically, we suggest that the relatively low level of temporary layoffs and high level of involuntary part-time workers make a jobless recovery similar to the one experienced in 1992 a plausible scenario.

Suggested Citation

  • Mary C. Daly & Bart Hobijn & Joyce Kwok, 2009. "Jobless recovery redux?," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue jun5.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfel:y:2009:i:jun5:n:2009-18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2009/el2009-18.html
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2009/el2009-18.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert E. Hall, 2006. "Job Loss, Job Finding and Unemployment in the US Economy over the Past Fifty Years," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2005, Volume 20, pages 101-166, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Robert Shimer, 2005. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 25-49, March.
    3. Robert Shimer, 2012. "Reassessing the Ins and Outs of Unemployment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 15(2), pages 127-148, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Edward S. Knotek & Stephen J. Terry, 2009. "How will unemployment fare following the recession?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 94(Q III), pages 5-33.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shigeru Fujita, 2011. "Dynamics of worker flows and vacancies: evidence from the sign restriction approach," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(1), pages 89-121, January/F.
    2. Matthias S. Hertweck & Vivien Lewis & Stefania Villa, 2021. "Going the Extra Mile: Effort by Workers and Job‐Seekers," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 53(8), pages 2099-2127, December.
    3. Kurozumi, Takushi & Van Zandweghe, Willem, 2010. "Labor market search, the Taylor principle, and indeterminacy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(7), pages 851-858, October.
    4. Régis Barnichon, 2007. "Productivity, Aggregate Demand and Unemployment Fluctuations," CEP Discussion Papers dp0819, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    5. Shigeru Fujita & Makoto Nakajima, 2016. "Worker Flows and Job Flows: A Quantitative Investigation," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 22, pages 1-20, October.
    6. Yongsung Chang & Sun-Bin Kim & Mark Bils, 2007. "Comparative Advantage in Cyclical Unemployment," 2007 Meeting Papers 508, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Mark Gertler & Antonella Trigari, 2009. "Unemployment Fluctuations with Staggered Nash Wage Bargaining," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(1), pages 38-86, February.
    8. Steven J. Davis & Till Von Wachter, 2011. "Recessions and the Costs of Job Loss," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 42(2 (Fall)), pages 1-72.
    9. Gregory De Walque & Olivier Pierrard & Henri Sneessens & Raf Wouters, 2009. "Sequential Bargaining in a Neo-Keynesian Model with Frictional Unemployment and Staggered Wage Negotiations," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 95-96, pages 223-250.
    10. Kory Kroft & Fabian Lange & Matthew J. Notowidigdo & Lawrence F. Katz, 2016. "Long-Term Unemployment and the Great Recession: The Role of Composition, Duration Dependence, and Nonparticipation," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(S1), pages 7-54.
    11. Hairault, Jean-Olivier & Zhutova, Anastasia, 2018. "The cyclicality of labor-market flows: A multiple-shock approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 150-172.
    12. Barnichon, Regis, 2012. "Vacancy posting, job separation and unemployment fluctuations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 315-330.
    13. Christine Braun & Charlie Nusbaum & Peter Rupert, 2021. "Labor Market Dynamics and the Migration Behavior of Married Couples," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 42, pages 239-263, October.
    14. Yashiv, Eran, 2006. "U.S. Labor Market Dynamics Revisited," IZA Discussion Papers 2455, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Domenico Ferraro, 2018. "The Asymmetric Cyclical Behavior of the U.S. Labor Market," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 30, pages 145-162, October.
    16. R. Jason Faberman, 2009. "Studying the Labor Market with the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey," NBER Chapters, in: Producer Dynamics: New Evidence from Micro Data, pages 83-108, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Yaniv Yedid-Levi, 2016. "Why does employment in all major sectors move together over the business cycle?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 22, pages 131-156, October.
    18. Sekyu Choi & Alexandre Janiak & Benjamín Villena‐Roldán, 2015. "Unemployment, Participation and Worker Flows Over the Life‐Cycle," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(589), pages 1705-1733, December.
    19. Noel Gaston & Gulasekaran Rajaguru, 2015. "A Markov-switching structural vector autoregressive model of boom and bust in the Australian labour market," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(4), pages 1271-1299, December.
    20. Faccini, Renato & Rosazza Bondibene, Chiara, 2012. "Labour market institutions and unemployment volatility: evidence from OECD countries," Bank of England working papers 461, Bank of England.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Unemployment; Labor market;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedfel:y:2009:i:jun5:n:2009-18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbsfus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.