IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/bejeap/v12y2012i1n19.html

The CPS Redesign's Effects on Measured Unemployment Duration in the Great Recession

Author

Listed:
  • Busch Michael E.

    (Michigan State University)

Abstract

During the Great Recession, reported unemployment duration has increased to much higher levels than during earlier severe recessions. Previous studies using data from non-recessionary periods have found that part of this increase was caused by a 1994 redesign in the way the Current Population Survey measures unemployment duration. This paper uses data from recessionary and non-recessionary periods to determine how the size of the redesign’s effect on the distribution of unemployment duration changes over the business cycle. I find that, for most measures of unemployment duration, the redesign effect is relatively constant across business cycle conditions, but the redesign effect on median unemployment duration tends to shrink during recessionary periods. This suggests a constant adjustment factor will adequately correct for the CPS redesign for most variables I consider, but for median duration the use of a constant adjustment factor will lead to underestimating the true median duration during high unemployment periods such as the Great Recession.

Suggested Citation

  • Busch Michael E., 2012. "The CPS Redesign's Effects on Measured Unemployment Duration in the Great Recession," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-19, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:12:y:2012:i:1:n:19
    DOI: 10.1515/1935-1682.3094
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/1935-1682.3094
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/1935-1682.3094?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George A. Akerlof & Janet L. Yellen, 1985. "Unemployment Through the Filter of Memory," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(3), pages 747-773.
    2. Michael W. L. Elsby & Bart Hobijn & Aysegul Sahin, 2010. "The Labor Market in the Great Recession," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 41(1 (Spring), pages 1-69.
    3. Robert Shimer, 2012. "Reassessing the Ins and Outs of Unemployment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 15(2), pages 127-148, April.
    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. Hairault, Jean-Olivier & Langot, Francois & Sopraseuth, Thepthida, 2019. "Unemployment fluctuations over the life cycle," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 334-352.

    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. Jonathan Heathcote & Fabrizio Perri & Gianluca Violante, 2020. "The Rise of US Earnings Inequality: Does the Cycle Drive the Trend?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 37, pages 181-204, August.
    2. Bruno Decreuse & Linas Tarasonis, 2021. "Statistical Discrimination in a Search Equilibrium Model: Racial Wage and Employment Disparities in the US," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 143, pages 105-136.
    3. Mary C. Daly & Bart Hobijn & Theodore S. Wiles, 2011. "Aggregate Real Wages: Macro Fluctuations and Micro Drivers," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-158/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    4. Euiyoung Jung, 2021. "On the design of labor market programs as stabilization policies," Working Papers halshs-03243698, HAL.
    5. Régis Barnichon & Bart Hobijn & Ayşegül Şahin, 2010. "Which industries are shifting the Beveridge curve?," Working Paper Series 2010-32, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    6. Richard K. Crump & Stefano Eusepi & Marc Giannoni & Aysegul Sahin, 2019. "A Unified Approach to Measuring u," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 50(1 (Spring), pages 143-238.
    7. Crump, Richard K. & Eusepi, Stefano & Giannoni, Marc & Şahin, Ayşegül, 2024. "The unemployment–inflation trade-off revisited: The Phillips curve in COVID times," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(S).
    8. Ofer Setty & Yaniv Yedid-Levi, 2021. "On the Provision of Unemployment Insurance when Workers are Ex-Ante Heterogeneous," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(1), pages 664-706.
    9. Borowczyk-Martins, Daniel & Lalé, Etienne, 2020. "The ins and outs of involuntary part-time employment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    10. Benedikt Herz & Thijs van Rens, 2020. "Accounting for Mismatch Unemployment," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(4), pages 1619-1654.
    11. Hie Joo Ahn & James Hamilton, 2022. "Measuring Labor-Force Participation and the Incidence and Duration of Unemployment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 44, pages 1-32, April.
    12. Alfonso Arpaia & Aron Kiss & Alessandro Turrini, 2014. "Is unemployment structural or cyclical? Main features of job matching in the EU after the crisis," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 527, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    13. Domenico Ferraro, 2018. "The Asymmetric Cyclical Behavior of the U.S. Labor Market," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 30, pages 145-162, October.
    14. Régis Barnichon & Andrew Figura, 2013. "Declining Labor Force Attachment and Downward Trends in Unemployment and Participation," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2013-88, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    15. Michael Elsby & Bart Hobijn & Ayşegül Şahin & Robert G. Valletta, 2011. "The labor market in the Great Recession: an update," Working Paper Series 2011-29, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    16. Bart Hobijn & Aysegul Sahin, 2013. "Beveridge Curve Shifts across Countries since the Great Recession," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 61(4), pages 566-600, December.
    17. Richard B. Freeman, 2013. "Failing the Test? The Flexible U.S. Job Market in the Great Recession," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 650(1), pages 78-97, November.
    18. Ronald Bachmann & Mathias Sinning, 2016. "Decomposing the Ins and Outs of Cyclical Unemployment," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 78(6), pages 853-876, December.
    19. Daouli, Joan & Demoussis, Michael & Giannakopoulos, Nicholas & Lambropoulou, Nikolitsa, 2015. "The ins and outs of Greek unemployment in the Great Depression," MPRA Paper 66299, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Razzu, Giovanni & Singleton, Carl, 2016. "Gender and the business cycle: An analysis of labour markets in the US and UK," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 47(PB), pages 131-146.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:bpj:bejeap:v:12:y:2012:i:1:n:19. 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyterbrill.com .

    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.