In recent years a growing number of countries have constructed data series on job creation and job destruction using establishment-level data sets. This paper provides a description and detailed comparison of these new data series for the United States and Canada. First, the Canadian and United States industry-level job creation and destruction data are remarkably similar. Industries with high (low) job creation in the US are evidenced by high (low) job creation in Canada. The same is true for job destruction. In addition, the overall magnitude of gross job flows in the two countries is comparable. Second, the time-series patterns of creation and destruction are qualitatively similar but do differ in a number of important respects. In both countries, job destruction is much more cyclically volatile than job creation. This cyclical asymmetry is, however, more pronounced in the United States. The paper finishes with a characterization of the job flow patterns using a modified Blanchard and Diamond (1992) model.
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The Trend to Smaller Producers in Manufacturing in Canada and the U.S.
March 2002
Working Paper Number:
CES-02-06
This paper examines the trend in the importance of small producers in the Canadian and U.S. manufacturing sectors from the early 1970s to the late 1990s in order to investigate whether there was a common North American trend in changes in plant size. It finds that small plants in both countries increased their share of employment up to the 1990s, but their share remained stable in the 1990s. Small plants increased their share of output up to the 1990s, but then saw their share of output decline. Over the entire time period, their share of output increased less than their share of employment and, therefore, their relative labour productivity has fallen. The similarity in the trends in the two countries suggests that causes of this phenomenon should be sought in similarities such as the technological environment rather than in country-specific factors like unionization or trade intensities.
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Gross Job Creation, Gross Job Destruction and Employment Reallocation
June 1990
Working Paper Number:
CES-90-04
This paper measures the heterogeneity of establishment-level employment changes in the U.S. manufacturing sector over the 1972 to 1986 period. Our empirical work exploits a rich data set with approximately 860,000 annual observations on 160,000 manufacturing establishments to calculate rates of gross job creation, gross job destruction, and their sum, gross job reallocation. The central empirical findings are as follows: (1) Based on March-to-March establishment-level employment changes, gross job reallocation averages more than 20% of employment per year. (2) For the manufacturing sector as a whole, March-to-March gross job reallocation varies over time from 17% to 23% of employment per year. (3) Time variation in gross job reallocation is countercyclic-gross job reallocation rates covary negatively with own-sector and manufacturing net employment growth rates. (4) Virtually all of the time variation in gross job reallocation is accounted for by idiosyncratic effects on the establishment growth rate density. Changes in the shape and location of the growth rate density due to aggregate-year effects and sector-year effects cannot explain the observed variation in gross job reallocation. (5) The part of gross job reallocation attributable to idiosyncratic effects fluctuates countercyclically. Combining (3) ' (5), we conclude that the intensity of shifts in the pattern of employment opportunities across establishments exhibits significant countercyclic variation. In preparing the data for this study, we have greatly benefited from the assistance of Robert Bechtold, Timothy Dunne, Cyr Linonis, James Monahan, Al Nucci and other Census Bureau employees at the Center for Economic Studies. We have also benefited from helpful comments by Katherine Abraham, Martin Baily, Fischer Black, Timothy Dunne, David Lilien, Robert McGuckin, Kevin M. Murphy, Larrty Katz, John Wallis, workshop participants at the University of Maryland, the Resource Mobility Session of the Econometric society (Winter 1988 meetings), an NBER conference on Alternative Explanations of Employment Fluctuations, and the NBER's Economic Fluctuations Program Meeting (Summer 1989). Scott Schuh provided excellent research assistance. We gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the National Science Foundation (SES-8721031 and SES-8720931), the Hoover Institution, and the Office of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Maryland. Davis also thanks the National Science Foundation for it's support through a grant to the National Fellows Program at the Hoover Institution. Most of the research for this paper was conducted while Davis was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
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Gross Job Flows for the U.S. Manufacturing Sector: Measurement from the Longitudinal Research Database
December 2006
Working Paper Number:
CES-06-30
Measures of job creation and destruction are now produced regularly by the U.S. statistical agencies. The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases via the Business Employment Dynamics (BED) on a quarterly basis measures of job creation and destruction for the U.S. nonfarm business sector and related disaggregation by industrial sector and size class. The U.S. Census Bureau has developed the Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) covering the nonfarm business sector that has been used to produce research analysis and special tabulations including tabulations of job creation and destruction. Both of these data programs build upon the measurement methods and data analysis of job creation and destruction measures from the Longitudinal Research Database (LRD) developed and published by Davis, Haltiwanger and Schuh (1996). In this paper, the LRD based estimates of job creation and destruction are updated and made available for consistent annual and quarterly series from 1972-1998. While the BED and LBD programs are more comprehensive in scope than the LRD, the extensive development of the LRD permits the construction of measures of job creation and destruction for a rich array of employer characteristics including industry, size, business age, ownership structure, location and wage structure. The updated series that are released with this working paper provide measures along each of these dimensions. The paper describes in detail the changes in the processing of the Annual Survey of Manufactures over the 1972-1998 period that are important to incorporate by users of the LRD at Census Research Data Centers as well as users of products from the LRD such as job creation and destruction.
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Establishment and Employment Dynamics in Appalachia: Evidence from the Longitudinal Business Database
December 2003
Working Paper Number:
CES-03-19
One indicator of the general economic health of a region is the rate at which new jobs are created. The newly developed Longitudinal Business Database has been used in this paper to develop a detailed portrait of establishment formation and attrition and job creation and destruction in the Appalachian Region. The foremost finding is that the pace of reallocation in Appalachia is lower than it is for the U.S.. This is evident in Appalachia's relatively lower establishment birth and death rates and job creation and destruction rates. For example, on average over the study time period, the U.S. job creation rate exceeds 45 percent, while the Appalachian job creation rate is 43 percent. Similarly, the U.S. job destruction rate is about 35 percent, while the Appalachian job destruction rate is about 33 percent. Even when controlling for other differences, job creation rates are 1.2 percentage points lower and job destruction rates are 3.4 percentage points lower in Appalachia relative to the rest of the U.S. Another indicator of the general economic health of a region is the quality of its jobs. The quality of jobs is measured in this paper by the average wage paid at the establishment. Here too there is cause for concern about the economic health of Appalachia. The analysis shows that wages are about 10 percent lower in Appalachia than in the U.S. even when controlling for differences in other characteristics across the two areas. This wage discrepancy has not narrowed over the time of the study. Moreover, new establishments have a similar wage gap. Employees at new establishments earn wages 10 percent less than at new establishments in the rest of the U.S.
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Job Reallocation And The Business Cycle: New Facts An Old Debate
September 1998
Working Paper Number:
CES-98-11
This paper provides new facts on the nature of job reallocation over the business cycle, and addresses the question of whether reallocation causes recessions or recessions cause reallocation. Although we do not resolve the question of causality, two general findings emerge that advance our understanding of job reallocation and business cycles. First, much of the cyclical fluctuation in gross job flows occurs in larger plants with relatively moderate employment growth that tends to be transitory, especially at medium-term horizons (up to five years). Unusually large employment growth rates, especially plant startups and shutdowns, are primarily small-plant phenomena and tend to be permanent, less cyclical, and occur later in recessions. Further, high job flow rates occur primarily in plants previously experiencing sharp employment contractions or expansions. Second, key variables that should determine the allocation factors of production across plants and sectors do in fact appear to be related to gross job flows, particularly job destruction. Relative prices, productivity, and investment exhibit time series correlations with job reallocation that suggest that allocative driving forces may contribute significantly to business cycle fluctuations.
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MEASURES OF JOB FLOW DYNAMICS IN THE U.S.*
January 1999
Working Paper Number:
CES-99-01
This paper uses the new Longitudinal Establishment and Enterprise Microdata (LEEM) at CES to investigate gross and net job flows for the U. S. economy. Much of the previous work on U.S. job flows has been based on analysis of the Longitudinal Research Database (LRD), which is limited to establishments in the manufacturing sector. The LEEM is the first high-quality, nationwide, comprehensive database for both manufacturing and non-manufacturing that is suitable for measuring annual job flows. We utilize the LEEM data to measure recent gross and net job flows for the entire U. S. economy. We then examine the relationships between firm size, establishment size, and establishment age, and investigate differences resulting from use of two alternative methods for classification of job flows by size of firm and establishment. Cell-based regression analysis is used to help distinguish among the effects of age, firm size, and establishment size on gross and net job flows in existing establishments. We find that gross job flow rates decline with age, and with increasing establishment size when controlling for age differences, whether initial size or mean size classification is utilized. Firm size differences contribute little or nothing additional when establishment size and age are controlled for. However, the relationship of net job growth to business size is very sensitive to the size classification method, even when data and all other methodology are identical. When mean size classification is used, the coefficient on establishment size for net job growth is generally positive, but when initial size is used, this coefficient is negative. These results shed light on some of the apparently conflicting findings in the literature on the relationship between net growth and the size of businesses.
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The Micro-Dynamics of Skill Mix Changes in a Dual Labor Market: The Spanish Manufacturing Experience
May 2009
Working Paper Number:
CES-09-12
As in many other developed countries, the share of skilled workers in Spain's labor force dramatically increased during the 1990s. This paper decomposes the aggregate skill mix change by a set of key firm characteristics and in the context of Spain's dual labor market. We find that continuing firms were the major drivers of skill mix growth and that expanding firms in particular increased their ratio of skilled workers. Net entry played a smaller but positive role due to higher-skilled entrants and lower-skilled exiters. Finally, we find that although firms with higher concentrations of temporary workers make bigger employment changes overall, firms' low-skilled employment is more strongly pro-cyclical than is high skilled employment.
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Decomposing Aggregate Trade Flows: New Evidence from U.S. Traders
September 2012
Working Paper Number:
CES-12-17
Using firm-level data on export transactions, we uncover a rich set of results about the extensive margins of exporting and exporter responses during periods of global downturns. We perform our analysis with respect to firm size, age, ownership status, and sector to emphasize the role of firm heterogeneity. We uncover a larger role for firm entry and exit in changes in annual export flows of single-unit, smaller, and younger firms. Young, small firms perform best during both periods of crises as well as non-crises periods. We also decompose the margins of U.S. imports at the U.S. importer, foreign supplier, and U.S. importer-foreign supplier pair levels. While export flows are closely correlated with global business cycles, import flows more closely approximate U.S. economic cycles. Additionally, both pair and foreign supplier flows are far more volatile than U.S. import flows, that is, U.S. importer-foreign supplier matches experience more churning on average than do either U.S. importers or foreign suppliers.
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Business Volatility, Job Destruction, and Unemployment
August 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-26
Unemployment inflows fell from 4 percent of employment per month in the early 1980s to 2 percent or less by the mid 1990s and thereafter. U.S. data also show a secular decline in the job destruction rate and the volatility of firm-level employment growth rates. We interpret this decline as a decrease in the intensity of idiosyncratic labor demand shocks, a key parameter in search and matching models of unemployment. According to these models, a lower intensity of idiosyncratic shocks produces less job destruction, fewer workers flowing through the unemployment pool and less frictional unemployment. To evaluate the importance of this theoretical mechanism, we relate industry-level unemployment flows from 1977 to 2005 to industry-level indicators for the intensity of idiosyncratic shocks. Unlike previous research, we focus on the lower frequency relationship of job destruction and business volatility to unemployment flows. We find strong evidence that declines in the intensity of idiosyncratic labor demand shocks drove big declines in the incidence and rate of unemployment. This evidence implies that the unemployment rate has become much less sensitive to cyclical movements in the job-finding rate.
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Technology and Jobs: Secular Changes and Cyclical Dynamics
September 1996
Working Paper Number:
CES-96-07
In this paper, we exploit plant-level data for U.S. manufacturing for the 1970s and 1980s to explore the connections between changes in technology and the structure of employment and wages. We focus on the nonproduction labor share (measured alternatively by employment and wages) as the variable of interest. Our main findings are summarized as follows: (i) aggregate changes in the nonproduction labor share at annual and longer frequencies are dominated by within plant changes; (ii) the distribution of annual within plant changes exhibits a spike at zero, tremendous heterogeneity and fat left and right tails; (iii) within plant secular changes are concentrated in recessions; and (iv) while observable indicators of changes in technology account for a significant fraction of the secular increase in the average nonproduction labor share, unobservable factors account for most of the secular increase, most of the cyclical variation and most of the cross sectional heterogeneity.
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