IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eneeco/v91y2020ics0140988320302504.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Oil price uncertainty and U.S. employment growth

Author

Listed:
  • Koirala, Niraj Prasad
  • Ma, Xiaohan

Abstract

This paper studies the effects of oil price changes on U.S. aggregate and sectoral employment growth in the presence of time-varying oil price uncertainty. We estimate a bivariate GARCH-in-Mean VAR model using U.S. monthly data of oil prices and employment growth for the period 1974 m2:2018 m11. Based on the results, we show that an increase in oil prices reduces total employment growth and that in most private sectors, but the public sector is largely unaffected. The effects on employment growth in various ”hub” sectors are also different. Furthermore, employment growths at both aggregate and disaggregate levels respond asymmetrically to positive and negative oil price shocks, which could possibly be attributed to oil price uncertainty. This asymmetric impact is more evident when the model is estimated on the entire sample than on the 1970s sample, implying that the role of oil price uncertainty in accounting for variations in employment growth can differ over time. These findings underline the empirical relevance of oil price uncertainty for the U.S. labor market dynamics.

Suggested Citation

  • Koirala, Niraj Prasad & Ma, Xiaohan, 2020. "Oil price uncertainty and U.S. employment growth," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:91:y:2020:i:c:s0140988320302504
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2020.104910
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988320302504
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.eneco.2020.104910?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 search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. N. Bloom, 2016. "Fluctuations in uncertainty," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 4.
    2. Olivier J. Blanchard & Marianna Riggi, 2013. "WHY ARE THE 2000s SO DIFFERENT FROM THE 1970s? A STRUCTURAL INTERPRETATION OF CHANGES IN THE MACROECONOMIC EFFECTS OF OIL PRICES," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(5), pages 1032-1052, October.
    3. Engle, Robert F. & Kroner, Kenneth F., 1995. "Multivariate Simultaneous Generalized ARCH," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(1), pages 122-150, February.
    4. Susanto Basu & Brent Bundick, 2017. "Uncertainty Shocks in a Model of Effective Demand," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 937-958, May.
    5. Alsalman, Zeina, 2016. "Oil price uncertainty and the U.S. stock market analysis based on a GARCH-in-mean VAR model," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 251-260.
    6. Ma, Xiaohan & Samaniego, Roberto, 2020. "The macroeconomic impact of oil earnings uncertainty: New evidence from analyst forecasts," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    7. Richard B. Freeman, 1987. "How Do Public Sector Wages and Employment Respond to Economic Conditions?," NBER Chapters, in: Public Sector Payrolls, pages 183-216, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Elder, John & Serletis, Apostolos, 2009. "Oil price uncertainty in Canada," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 852-856, November.
    9. Choi, Sangyup & Furceri, Davide & Huang, Yi & Loungani, Prakash, 2018. "Aggregate uncertainty and sectoral productivity growth: The role of credit constraints," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 314-330.
    10. Hui Tong & Shang-Jin Wei, 2011. "The Composition Matters: Capital Inflows and Liquidity Crunch During a Global Economic Crisis," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(6), pages 2023-2052.
    11. Aye, Goodness C. & Dadam, Vincent & Gupta, Rangan & Mamba, Bonginkosi, 2014. "Oil price uncertainty and manufacturing production," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 41-47.
    12. Helge Braun & Reinout De Bock & Riccardo DiCecio, 2009. "Supply shocks, demand shocks, and labor market fluctuations," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 91(May), pages 155-178.
    13. Kiseok Lee & Shawn Ni & Ronald A. Ratti, 1995. "Oil Shocks and the Macroeconomy: The Role of Price Variability," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4), pages 39-56.
    14. John Elder & Apostolos Serletis, 2010. "Oil Price Uncertainty," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(6), pages 1137-1159, September.
    15. Iván Alfaro & Nicholas Bloom & Xiaoji Lin, 2024. "The Finance Uncertainty Multiplier," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 132(2), pages 577-615.
    16. Jesús Fernández-Villaverde & Pablo Guerrón-Quintana & Keith Kuester & Juan Rubio-Ramírez, 2015. "Fiscal Volatility Shocks and Economic Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(11), pages 3352-3384, November.
    17. Lutz Kilian & Robert J. Vigfusson, 2011. "Are the responses of the U.S. economy asymmetric in energy price increases and decreases?," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 2(3), pages 419-453, November.
    18. Peter Ferderer, J., 1996. "Oil price volatility and the macroeconomy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 1-26.
    19. Mohamad B. Karaki, 2018. "Asymmetries In The Responses Of Regional Job Flows To Oil Price Shocks," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(3), pages 1827-1845, July.
    20. Frank Smets & Rafael Wouters, 2007. "Shocks and Frictions in US Business Cycles: A Bayesian DSGE Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 586-606, June.
    21. Deepankar Basu & Duncan K. Foley, 2013. "Dynamics of output and employment in the US economy," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 37(5), pages 1077-1106.
    22. Acurio Vásconez, Verónica & Giraud, Gaël & Mc Isaac, Florent & Pham, Ngoc-Sang, 2015. "The effects of oil price shocks in a new-Keynesian framework with capital accumulation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 844-854.
    23. Javier Ordóñez & Hector Sala & José I. Silva, 2011. "Oil Price Shocks and Labor Market Fluctuations," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), pages 89-118.
    24. Matías Braun & Borja Larrain, 2005. "Finance and the Business Cycle: International, Inter‐Industry Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(3), pages 1097-1128, June.
    25. Keane, Michael P & Prasad, Eswar S, 1996. "The Employment and Wage Effects of Oil Price Changes: A Sectoral Analysis," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(3), pages 389-400, August.
    26. Mohamad B. Karaki, 2018. "Oil Prices and State Unemployment Rates," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3).
    27. Davis, Steven J. & Haltiwanger, John, 2001. "Sectoral job creation and destruction responses to oil price changes," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 465-512, December.
    28. Dani Rodrik, 1998. "Why Do More Open Economies Have Bigger Governments?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(5), pages 997-1032, October.
    29. Don Bredin & John Elder & Stilianos Fountas, 2010. "The Effects of Uncertainty about Oil Prices in G-7," Working Papers 200840, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    30. Herrera, Ana María & Karaki, Mohamad B., 2015. "The effects of oil price shocks on job reallocation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 95-113.
    31. Loungani, Prakash, 1986. "Oil Price Shocks and the Dispersion Hypothesis," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 68(3), pages 536-539, August.
    32. Herrera, Ana María & Lagalo, Latika Gupta & Wada, Tatsuma, 2011. "Oil Price Shocks And Industrial Production: Is The Relationship Linear?," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(S3), pages 472-497, November.
    33. Herrera, Ana María & Lagalo, Latika Gupta & Wada, Tatsuma, 2015. "Asymmetries in the response of economic activity to oil price increases and decreases?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 108-133.
    34. Zeina N. Alsalman & Mohamad B. Karaki, 2019. "Oil Prices and Personal Consumption Expenditures: Does the Source of the Shock Matter?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 81(2), pages 250-270, April.
    35. Rebecca M. Blank, 1993. "Public Sector Growth and Labor Market Flexibility: The United States vs. The United Kingdom," NBER Working Papers 4339, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    36. Soojin Jo, 2014. "The Effects of Oil Price Uncertainty on Global Real Economic Activity," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(6), pages 1113-1135, September.
    37. Hamilton, James D & Herrera, Ana Maria, 2004. "Oil Shocks and Aggregate Macroeconomic Behavior: The Role of Monetary Policy: Comment," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(2), pages 265-286, April.
    38. Karaki, Mohamad B., 2017. "Nonlinearities in the response of real GDP to oil price shocks," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 146-148.
    39. Herrera, Ana María & Karaki, Mohamad B. & Rangaraju, Sandeep Kumar, 2017. "Where do jobs go when oil prices drop?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 469-482.
    40. Kandemir Kocaaslan, Ozge, 2019. "Oil price uncertainty and unemployment," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 577-583.
    41. Hartman, Richard, 1972. "The effects of price and cost uncertainty on investment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 258-266, October.
    42. Gregory, Robert G. & Borland, Jeff, 1999. "Recent developments in public sector labor markets," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 53, pages 3573-3630, Elsevier.
    43. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3573-3630 is not listed on IDEAS
    44. Maghyereh, Aktham & Abdoh, Hussein, 2020. "Asymmetric effects of oil price uncertainty on corporate investment," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    45. Zeina Alsalman Ana María Herrera, 2015. "Oil Price Shocks and the U.S. Stock Market: Do Sign and Size Matter?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3).
    46. Abel, Andrew B, 1983. "Optimal Investment under Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(1), pages 228-233, March.
    47. Rahman, Sajjadur & Serletis, Apostolos, 2011. "The Asymmetric Effects Of Oil Price Shocks," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(S3), pages 437-471, November.
    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. Amin, Md Ruhul & Wang, Xinyu & Aktas, Elvan, 2023. "Does oil price uncertainty affect corporate innovation?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    2. Ren, Xiaohang & Qin, Jianing & Jin, Chenglu & Yan, Cheng, 2022. "Global oil price uncertainty and excessive corporate debt in China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    3. Singh, Amanjot, 2022. "Oil Price uncertainty and labor investment efficiency," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    4. Gürkan Bozma & Murat Akadg & Rahman Aydin, 2021. "Dynamic Relationships between Oil Price, Inflation and Economic Growth: A VARMA, GARCH-in-mean, asymmetric BEKK Model for Turkey," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 41(3), pages 1266-1281.
    5. Afees A. Salisu & Abeeb Olaniran, 2022. "The U.S. Nonfarm Payroll and the out-of-sample predictability of output growth for over six decades," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(6), pages 4663-4673, December.

    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. Herrera, Ana María & Karaki, Mohamad B. & Rangaraju, Sandeep Kumar, 2019. "Oil price shocks and U.S. economic activity," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 89-99.
    2. Abiad, Abdul & Qureshi, Irfan A., 2023. "The macroeconomic effects of oil price uncertainty," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    3. Alsalman, Zeina, 2016. "Oil price uncertainty and the U.S. stock market analysis based on a GARCH-in-mean VAR model," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 251-260.
    4. Lang, Korbinian & Auer, Benjamin R., 2020. "The economic and financial properties of crude oil: A review," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    5. Kandemir Kocaaslan, Ozge, 2019. "Oil price uncertainty and unemployment," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 577-583.
    6. Borozan, Djula & Lolic Cipcic, Marina, 2022. "Asymmetric and nonlinear oil price pass-through to economic growth in Croatia: Do oil-related policy shocks matter?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    7. Kocaarslan, Baris & Soytas, Mehmet Ali & Soytas, Ugur, 2020. "The asymmetric impact of oil prices, interest rates and oil price uncertainty on unemployment in the US," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    8. Aktham I. Maghyereh & Basil Awartani & Osama D. Sweidan, 2019. "Oil price uncertainty and real output growth: new evidence from selected oil-importing countries in the Middle East," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(5), pages 1601-1621, May.
    9. Knotek, Edward S. & Zaman, Saeed, 2021. "Asymmetric responses of consumer spending to energy prices: A threshold VAR approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    10. Ahmed, M. Iqbal & Farah, Quazi Fidia & Kishan, Ruby P., 2023. "Oil price uncertainty and unemployment dynamics: Nonlinearities matter," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    11. Ozge Kandemir Kocaaslan, 2021. "Are the responses of output and investment to oil price shocks asymmetric?: The case of an oil-importing small open economy," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(5), pages 2501-2516, November.
    12. Elder, John, 2021. "Canadian industry level production and energy prices," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    13. Nguyen, Bao H. & Okimoto, Tatsuyoshi & Tran, Trung Duc, 2022. "Uncertainty-dependent and sign-dependent effects of oil market shocks," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 26(C).
    14. Ma, Xiaohan, 2023. "Oil uncertainty and the price-cost markup: Evidence from U.S. data," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    15. Song, Xinyu & Yang, Baochen, 2022. "Oil price uncertainty, corporate governance and firm performance," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 469-487.
    16. Joëts, Marc & Mignon, Valérie & Razafindrabe, Tovonony, 2017. "Does the volatility of commodity prices reflect macroeconomic uncertainty?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 313-326.
    17. Athanasios Triantafyllou & Dimitrios Bakas & Marilou Ioakimidis, 2023. "Commodity price uncertainty as a leading indicator of economic activity," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 4194-4219, October.
    18. Chan, Ying Tung & Dong, Yilin, 2022. "How does oil price volatility affect unemployment rates? A dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    19. Claudio Morana, 2013. "The Oil Price-Macroeconomy Relationship Since the Mid-1980s: A Global Perspective," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3).
    20. Śmiech, Sławomir & Papież, Monika & Rubaszek, Michał & Snarska, Małgorzata, 2021. "The role of oil price uncertainty shocks on oil-exporting countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Oil price uncertainty; Employment growth; GARCH-in-mean VAR; Private sector; Public sector; Hub sector;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models
    • E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity

    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:eee:eneeco:v:91:y:2020:i:c:s0140988320302504. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eneco .

    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.