This paper empirically examines the importance of explicitly accounting for the layoff-rehire process in the analysis of unemployment outcomes in the United States. We find that the spells of individuals' who initially expect to be recalled account for much more of the unemployment of unemployment insurance (UI) recipients than do spells actually ending in recall. Our results indicate that the recall and new job escape rates from unemployment have quite different time patterns and are often affected in opposite ways by explanatory variables. We also find that the probability of leaving unemployment both through recalls and new job finding increases greatly around the time that UI benefits lapse.

This paper examines the evidence from randomized evaluations of sector-focused training programs that target low-wage workers and combine up-front screening, occupational and soft-skills training, and wraparound services. The programs generate substantial and persistent earnings gains (12%–34%) following training. Theoretical mechanisms for program impacts are explored for the WorkAdvance demonstration. Earnings gains are generated by getting participants into higher-wage jobs in higher-earning industries and occupations, not just by raising employment. Training in transferable and certifiable skills (likely underprovided from poaching concerns) and reductions of employment barriers to high-wage sectors for nontraditional workers appear to play key roles.

Pharmacy today is a highly remunerated female-majority profession with a small gender earnings gap and low earnings dispersion. Using extensive surveys of pharmacists, as well as the US Census, American Community Surveys, and Current Population Surveys, we explore the gender earnings gap, penalty to part-time work, demographics of pharmacists relative to other college graduates, and evolution of the profession during the last half-century. Technological changes increasing substitutability among pharmacists, growth of pharmacy employment in retail chains and hospitals, and related decline of independent pharmacies reduced the penalty to part-time work and contribute to the narrow gender earnings gap in pharmacy.

We provide theoretical and empirical analyses of an asymmetric-information model of layoffs. When firms have discretion with respect to whom to lay off, the market infers that laid-off workers are of low ability. Assuming that no such negative inference is warranted if workers are displaced in a plant closing, postdisplacement wages should be lower and postdisplacement unemployment spells should be longer for those displaced by layoffs than for those displaced by plant closings, but predisplacement wages should not differ by cause of displacement. Evidence on displaced workers from Current Population Surveys supports all three of our model's predictions.

The share of U.S. workers in alternative work arrangements has increased substantially in recent decades. Micro longitudinal analyses show that unemployed workers are much more likely to transition into alternative work arrangements than other workers. Macro time-series evidence shows that weak labor market conditions lead to an increase in non-traditional work. But the estimated magnitudes imply that the Great Recession and high unemployment in the 2000s can account for only a modest part of the rise in alternative work. Secular factors associated with rising inequality and technological changes making it easier to contract out work appear to be the driving forces.

This paper provides empirical assessments of the two leading explanations of measured inter-industry wage differentials: (1) true wage differentials exist across industries, and (2) the measured differentials simply reflect unmeasured differences in workers' productive abilities. First, we summarize the existing evidence on the unmeasured-ability explanation. Second, we construct a simple model which shows that if matching is important then endogenous job-change decisions can create important self-selection biases even in first-differenced estimates of industry wage differentials. Third, we analyze a sample that approximates the experiment of exogenous job loss. We find that (i) the wage change experienced by a typical industry switcher closely resembles the difference in the relevant industry differentials estimated in a cross-section, and (ii) pre-displacement industry affiliation plays an important role in post-displacement wage determination.

Recent work by David Lilien has argued that the positive correlation between the dispersion of employment growth rates across sectors (σ) and the unemployment rate implies that sectoral shifts in labor demand are responsible for a substantial fraction of cyclical variation in unemployment. This paper demonstrates that, under empirically satisfied conditions, traditional single-factor business-cycle models will produce a positive correlation between σ and the unemployment rate. Information on the job vacancy rate permits one to distinguish between a pure sectoral shift and a pure aggregate demand interpretation of this positive correlation. The finding that σ and the volume of help wanted advertising (a job vacancy proxy) are negatively related supports an aggregate demand interpretation.