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The Quality-Adjusted Cyclical Price of Labor

In: Wage Dynamics in the 21st Century

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Bils
  • Marianna Kudlyak
  • Paulo Lins

Abstract

Typical measures of wages, such as average hourly earnings, fail to capture cyclicality in the effective cost of labor in the presence of (i) cyclical fluctuations in the quality of worker-firm matches, or (ii) wages being smoothed within employment matches. To address both concerns, we estimate cyclicality in labor’s user cost exploiting the longrun wage in a match to control for match quality. Using NLSY data for 1980 to 2019, we identify three channels by which hiring in a recession affects user cost: It lowers the new-hire wage; it lowers wages going forward in the match; but it also results in higher subsequent separations. All totaled, we find that labor’s user cost is highly procyclical, increasing by more than 4% for a 1 pp decline in the unemployment rate. For large recessions, like the Great Recession, that implies a decline in the price of labor of about 15%.
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Suggested Citation

  • Mark Bils & Marianna Kudlyak & Paulo Lins, 2021. "The Quality-Adjusted Cyclical Price of Labor," NBER Chapters, in: Wage Dynamics in the 21st Century, pages 13-59, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberch:14921
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    Cited by:

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    2. Marianna Kudlyak, 2024. "How Cyclical Is the User Cost of Labor?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 38(2), pages 159-180, Spring.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General
    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts
    • J63 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

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