IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedlrv/y2013imayp237-272nv.95no.3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Labor mismatch in the Great Recession: a review of indexes using recent U.S. data

Author

Listed:
  • Maria E. Canon
  • Mingyu Chen
  • Elise Marifian

Abstract

Labor mismatch, also known as structural imbalance, can be defined as a poor match between the characteristics of unemployed workers and those required for vacant jobs. In the wake of the jobless recovery from the Great Recession, economists have sought to explain the coexistence of a high unemployment rate and increasing job openings as a mismatch phenomenon. This article reviews five studies that have contributed to the development of mismatch indexes and computes the corresponding indexes over the period May 2005?May 2012 using job vacancy data from the Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine (HWOL) Data Series. For most of the indexes, mismatch increased during the Great Recession, although the indexes exhibit a range of behaviors. According to an index developed in Jackman and Roper (1987), mismatch can account for at most 2.72 percentage points of the 5.30-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate from the beginning of the recession to the unemployment rate peak.

Suggested Citation

  • Maria E. Canon & Mingyu Chen & Elise Marifian, 2013. "Labor mismatch in the Great Recession: a review of indexes using recent U.S. data," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 95(May), pages 237-272.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlrv:y:2013:i:may:p:237-272:n:v.95no.3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/13/03/237-272Canon.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nir Jaimovich & Henry E. Siu, 2020. "Job Polarization and Jobless Recoveries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(1), pages 129-147, March.
    2. Henry S. Farber & Robert G. Valletta, 2015. "Do Extended Unemployment Benefits Lengthen Unemployment Spells?: Evidence from Recent Cycles in the U.S. Labor Market," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(4), pages 873-909.
    3. Ferreira, Fernando & Gyourko, Joseph & Tracy, Joseph, 2010. "Housing busts and household mobility," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 34-45, July.
    4. Evans, George W, 1993. "Sectoral Imbalance and Unemployment in the United Kingdom: 1963-84," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 45(3), pages 440-456, July.
    5. Abraham, Katharine G & Katz, Lawrence F, 1986. "Cyclical Unemployment: Sectoral Shifts or Aggregate Disturbances?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(3), pages 507-522, June.
    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. Hugo Erken & Eric Loon & Wouter Verbeek, 2015. "Mismatch on the Dutch Labour Market in the Great Recession," De Economist, Springer, vol. 163(4), pages 435-459, December.
    2. Gina Cristina Dimian & Liviu Stelian Begu & Josef Jablonsky, 2017. "Unemployment and labour market mismatch in the European Union Countries," Zbornik radova Ekonomskog fakulteta u Rijeci/Proceedings of Rijeka Faculty of Economics, University of Rijeka, Faculty of Economics and Business, vol. 35(1), pages 13-44.
    3. Tara Sinclair & Martha Gimbel, 2020. "Mismatch in Online Job Search," Working Papers 2020-1, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    4. Hutter, Christian & Weber, Enzo, 2014. "Forecasting with a mismatch-enhanced labor market matching function," IAB-Discussion Paper 201416, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    5. Christian Hutter & Enzo Weber, 2017. "Mismatch and the Forecasting Performance of Matching Functions," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 79(1), pages 101-123, February.
    6. Dag Kolsrud, 2018. "Mismatch in the Norwegian Labour Market 2003–2013: Did Immigrants Make a Difference?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 137(3), pages 979-997, June.
    7. Hugo Erken & Eric van Loon & Wouter Verbeek, 2015. "Mismatch on the Dutch labour market in the Great Recession," CPB Discussion Paper 303.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    8. Hugo Erken & Eric van Loon & Wouter Verbeek, 2015. "Mismatch on the Dutch labour market in the Great Recession," CPB Discussion Paper 303, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    9. Mr. Geoffrey J Bannister & Mr. Harald Finger & Siddharth Kothari & Ms. Elena Loukoianova, 2020. "Addressing the Pandemic's Medium-Term Fallout in Australia and New Zealand," IMF Working Papers 2020/272, International Monetary Fund.

    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. Regis Barnichon & Andrew Figura, 2015. "Labor Market Heterogeneity and the Aggregate Matching Function," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 222-249, October.
    2. Ay?egül ?ahin & Joseph Song & Giorgio Topa & Giovanni L. Violante, 2014. "Mismatch Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(11), pages 3529-3564, November.
    3. Christopher L. Foote & Richard W. Ryan, 2015. "Labor-Market Polarization over the Business Cycle," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 371-413.
    4. Dave Reifschneider & William Wascher & David Wilcox, 2015. "Aggregate Supply in the United States: Recent Developments and Implications for the Conduct of Monetary Policy," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 63(1), pages 71-109, May.
    5. Marianna Kudlyak & Fabian Lange, 2014. "Measuring Heterogeneity in Job Finding Rates Among the Nonemployed Using Labor Force Status Histories," Working Paper 14-18, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    6. Auray Stéphane & Fuller David & Lkhagvasuren Damba & Terracol Antoine, 2017. "Dynamic Comparative Advantage, Directed Mobility Across Sectors, and Wages," Working Papers 2017-59, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    7. Edward P. Lazear & James R. Spletzer, 2012. "The United States labor market: status quo or a new normal?," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 405-451.
    8. Robert Shimer, 2021. "Comment on "Why Has the US Economy Recovered So Consistently from Every Recession in the Past 70 Years?"," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2021, volume 36, pages 56-67, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Meredith M. Paker, 2020. "The Jobless Recovery After the 1980-1981 UK Recession," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _182, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    10. Howes, Cooper, 2022. "Why does structural change accelerate in recessions? The credit reallocation channel," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 933-952.
    11. William T. Dickens & Robert K. Triest, 2012. "Potential effects of the Great Recession on the U.S. labor market," Working Papers 12-9, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    12. Takhtamanova, Yelena F. & Sierminska, Eva, 2016. "Impact of the Great Recession on Industry Unemployment: A 1976-2011 Comparison," IZA Discussion Papers 10340, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Michael W. L. Elsby & Ryan Michaels & David Ratner, 2015. "The Beveridge Curve: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 53(3), pages 571-630, September.
    14. Quah, Danny, 1994. "One business cycle and one trend from (many,) many disaggregates," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(3-4), pages 605-614, April.
    15. Michael Christl, 2020. "A Beveridge curve decomposition for Austria: did the liberalisation of the Austrian labour market shift the Beveridge curve?," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 54(1), pages 1-15, December.
    16. Murray, James, 2014. "Fiscal Policy Uncertainty and Its Macroeconomic Consequences," MPRA Paper 57409, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. John Haltiwanger & Scott Schuh, 1999. "Gross job flows between plants and industries," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Mar, pages 41-64.
    18. Ricardo J. Caballero & Mohamad L. Hammour, 1996. "On the Timing and Efficiency of Creative Destruction," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(3), pages 805-852.
    19. Christl, Michael, 2019. "A beveridge curve decomposition for Austria: What drives the unemployment rate?," VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy 203551, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    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:fedlrv:y:2013:i:may:p:237-272:n:v.95no.3. 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: Scott St. Louis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.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.