This paper carries out a comparative Canada-United States analysis of aggregate labour market dynamics using gross flows data. We find that there are many similarities in the behaviour of the flows among the states employment (E), unemployment (U), and out-of-the-labour-force (N) in the two countries, including the cyclical and seasonal features. In order to assess whether gross flows data can shed light on the factors which explain the emergence of a substantial unemployment rate gap between Canada and the U.S., we compare the behaviour of labour market dynamics in the pre-gap period, 1976-81, to that in the 1982-94 period, after the gap was established. We find that marked relative changes in some transition rates took place between these two periods. The probabilities of moving from U to E and from U to N fell more in Canada than in the U.S., while the probabilities of moving from E to U and from N to U changed in the opposite direction. Although the rise in Canadian unemployment is in part associated with relative changes in the transition rates between U and E (in both directions), much of the rise in relative unemployment is associated not with movements between employ-ment and non-employment but rather with movements between the non-employment states U and N. The paper provides further evidence that the search for an understanding of the rise in unemployment in Canada relative to the U.S. lies in the reasons for the relative changes in how Canadians and Americans spend their time when not employed.
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Paper provided by UBC Department of Economics in its series UBC Departmental Archives with number
97-25.