This article examines the impact of unemployment insurance (UI) on the allocation of labor across industries. An overlooked aspect of UI is the effect of imperfect experience rating on hiring. Firms in more stable industries generally pay more into the UI system than their workers ever receive in benefits, thus subsidizing more volatile industries. The results indicate that industry employment shares are significantly affected by UI and that there is a net shift of resources from the service industry to the construction industry. The estimates also imply that layoff unemployment is increased by about 5% because of UI-induced employment shifts.

This article is concerned with the determinants of English-language fluency among immigrants and the effects of fluency on earnings. Using special survey data on a sample of over eight hundred aliens, the analysis shows the importance of certain variables not previously available, speaking fluency at migration and English reading fluency. English speaking and reading fluency both increase with duration in the United States, and the increase with duration is greater for those with more schooling and who are not Hispanic. The article shows that reading fluency is more important than speaking fluency as a determinant of earnings.