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Employment Hysteresis from the Great Recession

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  • Danny Yagan

Abstract

This paper uses U.S. local areas as a laboratory to test whether the Great Recession depressed 2015 employment. In full-population longitudinal data, I find that exposure to a 1-percentage-point-larger 2007-2009 local unemployment shock caused working-age individuals to be 0.4 percentage points less likely to be employed at all in 2015, evidently via labor force exit. These shocks also increased 2015 income inequality. General human capital decay and persistently low labor demand each rationalize the findings better than lost job-specific rents, lost firm-specific human capital, or reduced migration. Simple extrapolation suggests the recession caused most of the 2007-2015 age-adjusted employment decline.

Suggested Citation

  • Danny Yagan, 2017. "Employment Hysteresis from the Great Recession," NBER Working Papers 23844, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23844
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    Cited by:

    1. Lídia Farré & Francesco Fasani & Hannes Mueller, 2018. "Feeling useless: the effect of unemployment on mental health in the Great Recession," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-34, December.
    2. Daniel Schaefer & Carl Singleton, 2017. "Real Wages and Hours in the Great Recession: Evidence from Firms and their Entry-Level Jobs," CESifo Working Paper Series 6766, CESifo.
    3. Paulo R. Mota & Paulo B. Vasconcelos, 2018. "Does the Deregulation of the Labour Market Reduce Employment Hysteresis? An Analysis in a Low Interest Rate Environment," FEP Working Papers 611, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    4. Dosi, G. & Pereira, M.C. & Roventini, A. & Virgillito, M.E., 2019. "What if supply-side policies are not enough? The perverse interaction of flexibility and austerity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 360-388.
    5. Jaana Remes, Jan Mischke and Mekala Krishnan, 2018. "Solving the Productivity Puzzle: The Role of Demand and the Promise of Digitization," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 34, pages 28-51, Fall.
    6. Michael Amior & Alan Manning, 2018. "The Persistence of Local Joblessness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(7), pages 1942-1970, July.
    7. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi, 2018. "Finance and Business Cycles: The Credit-Driven Household Demand Channel," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(3), pages 31-58, Summer.
    8. Saroj Bhattarai & Choongryul Yang & Felipe Schwartzman, 2019. "The Persistent Employment E ffects of the 2006-09 U.S. Housing Wealth Collapse," 2019 Meeting Papers 671, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    9. Lavertu, Stéphane & Clair, Travis St., 2018. "Beyond spending levels: Revenue uncertainty and the performance of local governments," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 59-80.
    10. Olivier J. Blanchard, 2017. "Should we Get rid of the Natural Rate Hypothesis?," NBER Working Papers 24057, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E0 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General
    • H0 - Public Economics - - General
    • L0 - Industrial Organization - - General

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