IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v102y2012i3p520-25.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unemployment in the Great Recession: Did the Housing Market Crisis Prevent the Unemployed from Moving to Take Jobs?

Author

Listed:
  • Henry S. Farber

Abstract

The labor market in the Great Recession and its aftermath is characterized by great difficulty in escaping unemployment. I present two empirical analyses of a particular explanation for that difficulty, that the housing market crisis has prevented the unemployed from selling their homes and moving to take new jobs. First, I examine post-job-loss mobility rates by home ownership status using data from the Displaced Workers Survey. Second, I examine mobility rates for unemployed homeowners and renters from the month-to-month CPS match. Neither analysis provides any support for the idea that the housing market crisis has reduced mobility of the unemployed.

Suggested Citation

  • Henry S. Farber, 2012. "Unemployment in the Great Recession: Did the Housing Market Crisis Prevent the Unemployed from Moving to Take Jobs?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 520-525, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:102:y:2012:i:3:p:520-25
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.102.3.520
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Modestino, Alicia Sasser & Dennett, Julia, 2013. "Are American homeowners locked into their houses? The impact of housing market conditions on state-to-state migration," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 322-337.
    2. Henry S. Farber, 2011. "Job Loss in the Great Recession: Historial Perspective from the Displaced Workers Survey, 1984-2010," Working Papers 1309, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    3. Oswald, Andrew J., 1996. "A Conjecture on the Explanation for High Unemployment in the Industrialized Nations: Part I," Economic Research Papers 268744, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    4. Farber, Henry S, 2011. "Job Loss in the Great Recession: Historical Perspective from the Displaced Workers Survey, 1984-2010," IZA Discussion Papers 5696, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Daniel Aaronson & Jonathan Davis, 2011. "How much has house lock affected labor mobility and the unemployment rate?," Chicago Fed Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, issue Sep.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Dickens William T. & Triest Robert K., 2012. "Potential Effects of the Great Recession on the U.S. Labor Market," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(3), pages 1-41, October.
    2. 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.
    3. Siddharth Kothari & Itay Saporta Eksten & Edison Yu, 2013. "The (Un)importance of Geographical Mobility in the Great Recession"," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(3), pages 553-563, July.
    4. Modestino, Alicia Sasser & Dennett, Julia, 2013. "Are American homeowners locked into their houses? The impact of housing market conditions on state-to-state migration," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 322-337.
    5. Valletta, Robert G., 2013. "House lock and structural unemployment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 86-97.
    6. Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2020. "How Do Expectations about the Macroeconomy Affect Personal Expectations and Behavior?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(4), pages 731-748, October.
    7. Fatih Karahan & Serena Rhee, 2014. "Population aging, migration spillovers, and the decline in interstate migration," Staff Reports 699, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    8. Jessamyn Schaller & Mariana Zerpa, 2019. "Short-Run Effects of Parental Job Loss on Child Health," American Journal of Health Economics, MIT Press, vol. 5(1), pages 8-41, Winter.
    9. Jan Marcus, 2014. "Does Job Loss Make You Smoke and Gain Weight?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 81(324), pages 626-648, October.
    10. Borjas, George J., 2017. "The labor supply of undocumented immigrants," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 1-13.
    11. Nucci, Francesco & Riggi, Marianna, 2018. "Labor force participation, wage rigidities, and inflation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 274-292.
    12. Michał Myck & Monika Oczkowska, 2018. "Shocked by therapy? Unemployment in the first years of the socio‐economic transition in Poland and its long‐term consequences," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 26(4), pages 695-724, October.
    13. Sheldon Danziger, 2013. "Evaluating the Effects of the Great Recession," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 650(1), pages 6-24, November.
    14. Shigeru Fujita, 2012. "Labor market anxiety and the downward trend in the job separation rate," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Q4, pages 1-7.
    15. Song, Younghwan, 2018. "Job displacement and subjective well-being: Findings from the American Time Use Survey Well-Being Modules," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 52(1), pages 1-13.
    16. Fujita, Shigeru, 2018. "Declining labor turnover and turbulence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 1-19.
    17. Lei Fang & Jun Nie, 2014. "Human capital dynamics and the U.S. labor market," Research Working Paper RWP 13-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    18. Ayça Akarçay Gürbüz & Sezgin Polat & Mustafa Ulus, 2014. "In Limbo: Exploring Transition to Discouragement," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 26(4), pages 527-551, September.
    19. Pallab Kumar Ghosh, 2018. "The Short-Run Effects of the Great Recession on Crime," Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 92-111, September.
    20. Lane Kenworthy & Timothy Smeeding, 2013. "GINI Country Report: Growing Inequalities and their Impacts in the United States," GINI Country Reports united_states, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:aea:aecrev:v:102:y:2012:i:3:p:520-25. 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.