IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3524.html

Job Vacancy Rates in the Firm: An Empirical Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Harry J. Holzer

Abstract

In this paper I present some evidence on the magnitudes and determinants of job vacancy rates at the firm level. The data are from a survey of firms in 1980 and 1982, as well as from 1980 Census data on industry and local area characteristics. The results show that overall job vacancy rates are low but there is substantial variation across firms, occupations, industries, and local areas. Unemployment rates, either local or aggregate, have negative effects on vacancy rates while average industry skill levels have positive effects, thus indicating the importance of the firm's demand for skills. Large and/or unionized firms have relatively low vacancy rates, which also account for the low vacancy rates of high-wage firms; and firms with high turnover and recent sales growth have higher vacancy rates. Thus, a variety of market conditions and firm characteristics influence vacancy rates at the firm level.

Suggested Citation

  • Harry J. Holzer, 1990. "Job Vacancy Rates in the Firm: An Empirical Analysis," NBER Working Papers 3524, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3524
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3524.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cragg, John G, 1971. "Some Statistical Models for Limited Dependent Variables with Application to the Demand for Durable Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(5), pages 829-844, September.
    2. Freeman, Richard B, 1984. "Longitudinal Analyses of the Effects of Trade Unions," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(1), pages 1-26, January.
    3. Barron, John M & Bishop, John & Dunkelberg, William C, 1985. "Employer Search: The Interviewing and Hiring of New Employees," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(1), pages 43-52, February.
    4. Harry J. Holzer, 1988. "Structural/Frictional and Demand-Deficient Unemployment in Local Labor Markets," NBER Working Papers 2652, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Brown, Charles & Medoff, James, 1989. "The Employer Size-Wage Effect," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1027-1059, October.
    6. Hosios, Arthur J, 1990. "Factor Market Search and the Structure of Simple General Equilibrium Models," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(2), pages 325-355, April.
    7. Sattinger, Michael, 1990. "Unemployment, the Market for Interviews, and Wage Employment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(2), pages 356-371, April.
    8. Albrecht, James W & Axell, Bo, 1984. "An Equilibrium Model of Search Unemployment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(5), pages 824-840, October.
    9. Bent Hansen, 1970. "Excess Demand, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Wages," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(1), pages 1-23.
    10. McKinley L. Blackburn & David E. Bloom & Richard B. Freeman, 1989. "The Declining Economic Position of Less-Skilled American Males," NBER Working Papers 3186, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Harry J. Holzer & Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 1991. "Job Queues and Wages," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(3), pages 739-768.
    12. Jackman, R & Layard, Richard & Pissarides, C, 1989. "On Vacancies," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 51(4), pages 377-394, November.
    13. Oliver Jean Blanchard & Peter Diamond, 1989. "The Beveridge Curve," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 20(1), pages 1-76.
    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. Harbo hansen, Niels-Jakob, 2019. "Measuring job openings: evidence from Swedish plant level data," Working Paper Series 2019:27, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.

    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. Harry J. Holzer, 1990. "Wages, Employer Costs, and Employee Performance in the Firm," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 43(3), pages 147-1-164-, April.
    2. Jerome Fahrer & Andrew Pease, 1993. "The Unemployment/Vacancy Relationship in Australia," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9305, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    3. Farm, Ante, 2003. "Vacancies, Hirings, and the Duration Function," Working Paper Series 2/2003, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
    4. Robert M. Hutchens, "undated". "A Path to Good Jobs? Unemployment and Low Wages: The Distribution of Opportunity for Young Unskilled Workers," Economics Public Policy Brief Archive 11, Levy Economics Institute.
    5. Luojia Hu, 2003. "The Hiring Decisions and Compensation Structures of Large Firms," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 56(4), pages 663-681, July.
    6. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2567-2627 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Farm, Ante, 2000. "Job Openings, Hirings, and Unmet Demand: A New Approach to the Matching Function and the Beveridge Curve," Working Paper Series 8/2000, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
    8. Lindeboom, Maarten & van Ours, Jan C & Renes, Gusta, 1994. "Matching Employers and Workers: An Empirical Analysis on the Effectiveness of Search," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 46(1), pages 45-67, January.
    9. Lisi, Gaetano, 2010. "Introduzione allo studio dei modelli di "matching" del mercato del lavoro [Introduction to the study of matching models of unemployment]," MPRA Paper 22735, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Sniekers, F.J.T., 2013. "Endogenous Beveridge cycles and the volatility of unemployment," CeNDEF Working Papers 13-12, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Center for Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Finance.
    11. Olivier Jean Blanchard & Peter Diamond, 1994. "Ranking, Unemployment Duration, and Wages," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(3), pages 417-434.
    12. Pieter A. Gautier & Coen N. Teulings, 2000. "The Right Man for the Job: Increasing Returns in Search?," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0066, Econometric Society.
    13. Ronald Wolthoff & Ioana Marinescu, 2012. "Wages, Job Queues, and Skills," 2012 Meeting Papers 592, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    14. Manning, Alan, 1999. "Pretty vacant: recruitment in low wage labour markets," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 20231, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Carsten Ochsen, 2009. "On the measurement of mismatch," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 405-409.
    16. R. Jason Faberman, 2020. "Recruiting intensity," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 1-21, July.
    17. Bruce Fallick & Charles A. Fleischman, 2001. "The importance of employer-to-employer flows in the U.S. labor market," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2001-18, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    18. Ravi Balakrishnan, 2001. "The interaction of firing costs and on-the-job search: an application of a search theoretic model to the Spanish labour market," Working Papers 0102, Banco de España.
    19. Gross, Dominique M., 1997. "Aggregate job matching and returns to scale in Germany," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 243-248, October.
    20. Ronald P. Wolthoff, 2010. "Applications and Interviews: A Structural Analysis of Two-Sided Simultaneous Search," Working Papers tecipa-418, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    21. Martin Robson, 2006. "Sectoral shifts, employment specialization and the efficiency of matching: An analysis using UK regional data," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(7), pages 743-754.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:3524. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.