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Job Ladder and Business Cycles

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  • Felipe Alves

Abstract

I build a Heterogeneous Agents New Keynesian model with rich labor market dynamics. Workers search both off- and on-the-job, giving rise to a job ladder, where employed workers slowly move toward more productive and better paying jobs through job-to-job transitions, while negative shocks occasionally throw them back into unemployment. The state of the economy includes the distribution of workers over wealth, labor earnings and match productivities. In the wake of an adverse financial shock calibrated to mimic the US Great Recession unemployment dynamics, firms reduce hiring, causing the job ladder to all but “stop working.” This leaves wages stagnant for several years, triggering a sharp contraction and slow recovery in consumption and output. On the supply side, the slow pace in worker turnover leaves workers stuck at the bottom of the ladder, effectively cutting labor productivity growth in the aggregate. The interaction between weak demand and low productivity leads to inflation dynamics that resemble the missing disinflation of that period.

Suggested Citation

  • Felipe Alves, 2022. "Job Ladder and Business Cycles," Staff Working Papers 22-14, Bank of Canada.
  • Handle: RePEc:bca:bocawp:22-14
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Business fluctuations and cycles; Inflation and prices; Labour markets; Productivity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D52 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Incomplete Markets
    • 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

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