IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spd/journl/v67y2017i4p45-84.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unemployment and labor force participation across the US States: new evidence from panel data

Author

Listed:
  • Nicholas Apergis

    (University of Piraeus,Greece, Department of Banking & Financial Management)

  • Ibrahim Arisoy

    (Department of Economics, Cukurova University, Turkey)

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between unemployment and labor force participation to judge the presence of the discouraged worker/added worker/unemployment invariance effect in the US labor market, spanning the period 1976-2014. Panel unit root and cointegration tests explore this relationship. The results indicate the presence of a relationship between unemployment and labor force participation rates, while the impact of unemployment on labor force participation is negative, indicating the prevalence of the discouraged worker effect across the US. These findings receive statistical support through panel causality tests, while they carry significant policy implications in relevance to labor policies across the US states.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas Apergis & Ibrahim Arisoy, 2017. "Unemployment and labor force participation across the US States: new evidence from panel data," SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, University of Piraeus, vol. 67(4), pages 45-84, October-D.
  • Handle: RePEc:spd:journl:v:67:y:2017:i:4:p:45-84
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://spoudai.unipi.gr/index.php/spoudai/article/download/2624/2653/2624-3223-1-SM
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gomes, Pedro, 2012. "Labour market flows: Facts from the United Kingdom," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 165-175.
    2. Raven E. Saks & Abigail Wozniak, 2011. "Labor Reallocation over the Business Cycle: New Evidence from Internal Migration," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(4), pages 697-739.
    3. Burda, Michael & Wyplosz, Charles, 1994. "Gross worker and job flows in Europe," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 1287-1315, June.
    4. Joakim Westerlund, 2008. "Panel cointegration tests of the Fisher effect," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(2), pages 193-233.
    5. Gustavsson, Magnus & Österholm, Pär, 2012. "Labor-force participation rates and the informational value of unemployment rates: Evidence from disaggregated US data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 116(3), pages 408-410.
    6. Michael W.L. Elsby & Bart Hobijn & Aysegul Sahin & Robert G. Valletta, 2011. "The Labor Market in the Great Recession: An Update," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-173/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    7. Lee, Grace H.Y. & Parasnis, Jaai, 2014. "Discouraged workers in developed countries and added workers in developing countries? Unemployment rate and labour force participation," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 90-98.
    8. Whitney K. Newey & Kenneth D. West, 1994. "Automatic Lag Selection in Covariance Matrix Estimation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(4), pages 631-653.
    9. Layard, Richard & Nickell, Stephen & Jackman, Richard, 2005. "Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199279173.
    10. M. Hashem Pesaran, 2007. "A simple panel unit root test in the presence of cross-section dependence," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(2), pages 265-312.
    11. Makoto Kakinaka & Hiroaki Miyamoto, 2012. "Unemployment and labour force participation in Japan," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(11), pages 1039-1043, July.
    12. Liu, De-Chih, 2014. "The link between unemployment and labor force participation rates in Japan: A regional perspective," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 52-58.
    13. John Dagsvik & Tom Kornstad & Terje Skjerpen, 2013. "Labor force participation and the discouraged worker effect," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 401-433, August.
    14. Michael W. L. Elsby & Bart Hobijn & Aysegul Sahin & Robert G. Valletta, 2011. "The Labor Market in the Great Recession — An Update to September 2011," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 42(2 (Fall)), pages 353-384.
    15. M. Hashem Pesaran, 2021. "General diagnostic tests for cross-sectional dependence in panels," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 13-50, January.
    16. Maarten van Ham & Clara H. Mulder & Pieter Hooimeijer, 2001. "Local Underemployment and the Discouraged Worker Effect," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 38(10), pages 1733-1751, September.
    17. M. Hashem Pesaran & Yongcheol Shin & Richard J. Smith, 2001. "Bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(3), pages 289-326.
    18. Olivier J. Blanchard & Lawrence H. Summers, 1986. "Hysteresis and the European Unemployment Problem," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1986, Volume 1, pages 15-90, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Marika Karanassou & Dennis J. Snower, 2004. "Unemployment Invariance," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 5(3), pages 297-317, August.
    20. Elliott, Graham & Rothenberg, Thomas J & Stock, James H, 1996. "Efficient Tests for an Autoregressive Unit Root," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(4), pages 813-836, July.
    21. Johann Fuchs & Enzo Weber, 2017. "Long-term unemployment and labour force participation: a decomposition of unemployment to test for the discouragement and added worker hypotheses," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(60), pages 5971-5982, December.
    22. Karanassou Marika & Snower Dennis J., 2004. "Unemployment Invariance," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 5(3), pages 297-317, August.
    23. Stephanie Aaronson & Tomaz Cajner & Bruce Fallick & Felix Galbis-Reig & Christopher Smith & William Wascher, 2014. "Labor Force Participation: Recent Developments and Future Prospects," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 45(2 (Fall)), pages 197-275.
    24. L. Vanessa Smith & Stephen Leybourne & Tae-Hwan Kim & Paul Newbold, 2004. "More powerful panel data unit root tests with an application to mean reversion in real exchange rates," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(2), pages 147-170.
    25. Johansen, Soren, 1995. "Likelihood-Based Inference in Cointegrated Vector Autoregressive Models," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198774501.
    26. Summers, Larry, 2003. "Cyclical dynamics in the new economy," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 525-530, July.
    27. M. Hashem Pesaran, 2006. "Estimation and Inference in Large Heterogeneous Panels with a Multifactor Error Structure," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(4), pages 967-1012, July.
    28. Congregado, Emilio & Golpe, Antonio A. & van Stel, André, 2011. "Exploring the big jump in the Spanish unemployment rate: Evidence on an 'added-worker' effect," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 1099-1105, May.
    29. Lee, Chien-Chiang & Chang, Chun-Ping, 2008. "Unemployment hysteresis in OECD countries: Centurial time series evidence with structural breaks," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 312-325, March.
    30. Gustavsson, Magnus & Osterholm, Par, 2006. "The informational value of unemployment statistics: A note on the time series properties of participation rates," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 428-433, September.
    31. Veracierto, Marcelo, 2008. "On the cyclical behavior of employment, unemployment and labor force participation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(6), pages 1143-1157, September.
    32. Blanchard, Olivier J. & Summers, Lawrence H., 1987. "Hysteresis in unemployment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 288-295.
    33. Spletzer, James R, 1997. "Reexamining the Added Worker Effect," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(2), pages 417-427, April.
    34. David H. Papell & Christian J. Murray & Hala Ghiblawi, 2000. "The Structure of Unemployment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(2), pages 309-315, May.
    35. Peter C. B. Phillips & Donggyu Sul, 2003. "Dynamic panel estimation and homogeneity testing under cross section dependence *," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 6(1), pages 217-259, June.
    36. Oliver Jean Blanchard & Peter Diamond, 1990. "The Cyclical Behovior of the Gross Flows of U.S. Workers," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 21(2), pages 85-156.
    37. Josep Lluís Carrion-i-Silvestre & Tomás del Barrio-Castro & Enrique López-Bazo, 2005. "Breaking the panels: An application to the GDP per capita," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 8(2), pages 159-175, July.
    38. Emerson, Jamie, 2011. "Unemployment and labor force participation in the United States," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 111(3), pages 203-206, June.
    39. Murphy, Kevin M & Topel, Robert H, 1997. "Unemployment and Nonemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 295-300, May.
    40. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 2003. "Computation and analysis of multiple structural change models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 1-22.
    41. Kula Ferit & Aslan Alper, 2010. "Hysteresis vs. Natural Rate of Unemployment: One, the Other, or Both?," South East European Journal of Economics and Business, Sciendo, vol. 5(1), pages 91-94, April.
    42. Jaeger, Albert & Parkinson, Martin, 1994. "Some evidence on hysteresis in unemployment rates," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 329-342, February.
    43. Willem Van Zandweghe, 2012. "Interpreting the recent decline in labor force participation," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 97(Q I), pages 5-34.
    44. Michael W. L. Elsby & Bart Hobijn & Aysegul Sahin & Robert G. Valletta, 2011. "The Labor Market in the Great Recession — An Update to September 2011," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 43(2 (Fall)), pages 353-384.
    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. Mutascu, Mihai & Sokic, Alexandre, 2021. "Okun's law in the US: New insights in time and frequency," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 207-222.
    2. Falakahla, Lwazi, 2018. "The Causality Between Youth Unemployment, Education Attainment and Labour Force Participation: Evidence from South Africa," MPRA Paper 92562, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Qaiser Munir & Sook Ching Kok & Kasim Mansur, 2019. "External Shocks, Structural Breaks And Unemployment Hysteresis In Selected Asian Countries," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 64(03), pages 575-600, June.
    2. Giorgio Canarella & Rangan Gupta & Stephen M. Miller & Stephen K. Pollard, 2019. "Unemployment rate hysteresis and the great recession: exploring the metropolitan evidence," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 61-79, January.
    3. Ibrahim Arisoy, 2018. "An Empirical Examination of Unemployment Invariance Hypothesis, Discouraged and Added Worker Effects in Turkey," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 8(6), pages 11-14.
    4. Giray Gozgor, 2013. "Testing Unemployment Persistence in Central and Eastern European Countries," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 3(3), pages 694-700.
    5. Matteo Lanzafame, 2010. "The nature of regional unemployment in Italy," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 39(3), pages 877-895, December.
    6. Aysit Tansel & Zeynel Abidin Ozdemir, 2018. "Unemployment invariance hypothesis, added and discouraged worker effects in Canada," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 39(7), pages 929-936, October.
    7. Apergis, Nicholas & Katsaiti, Marina-Selini, 2018. "Poverty and the resource curse: Evidence from a global panel of countries," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 211-223.
    8. Österholm, Pär, 2010. "Unemployment and labour-force participation in Sweden," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 106(3), pages 205-208, March.
    9. Aysit Tansel & Zeynel Abidin Ozdemir, 2016. "Unemployment Invariance Hypothesis, Added and Discouraged Worker Effects in Canada?," ERC Working Papers 1717, ERC - Economic Research Center, Middle East Technical University, revised Dec 2017.
    10. Cheng, Ka Ming, 2022. "Doubts on natural rate of unemployment: Evidence and policy implications," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 230-239.
    11. Marika Karanassou & Hector Sala & Dennis J. Snower, 2010. "Phillips Curves And Unemployment Dynamics: A Critique And A Holistic Perspective," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(1), pages 1-51, February.
    12. Muhammad zaheer Khan & Rusmawati Said & Sadaf Amjad, 2024. "Relationship between labor force participation and unemployment in Pakistan," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 44(1), pages 264-272.
    13. Apergis, Nicholas, 2019. "The impact of fracking activities on Oklahoma's housing prices: A panel cointegration analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 94-101.
    14. Khraief, Naceur & Shahbaz, Muhammad & Heshmati, Almas & Azam, Muhammad, 2020. "Are unemployment rates in OECD countries stationary? Evidence from univariate and panel unit root tests," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    15. Cheng, Shu-Ching & Wu, Tsung-pao & Lee, Kuei-Chiu & Chang, Tsangyao, 2014. "Flexible Fourier unit root test of unemployment for PIIGS countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 142-148.
    16. Tansel, Aysit & Ozdemir, Zeynel Abidin & Aksoy, Emre, 2016. "Does Unemployment Invariance Hypothesis Hold for Canada?," MPRA Paper 72869, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Liu, De-Chih, 2014. "The link between unemployment and labor force participation rates in Japan: A regional perspective," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 52-58.
    18. Martin Leites & Sylvina Porras, 2013. "El enfoque de la Reacción en Cadena: una aplicación para explicar la dinámica del desempleo en Uruguay," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 13-11, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    19. Martín-Román, Ángel L., 2022. "Beyond the added-worker and the discouraged-worker effects: the entitled-worker effect," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    20. Omay, Tolga & Shahbaz, Muhammad & Stewart, Chris, 2021. "Is There Really Hysteresis in OECD Countries’ Unemployment Rates? New Evidence Using a Fourier Panel Unit Root Test," MPRA Paper 107691, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 10 May 2021.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Unemployment invariance hypothesis; discouraged worker effect; labor force participation rates; unemployment rates; US states panel data;
    All these keywords.

    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
    • J60 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - General

    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:spd:journl:v:67:y:2017:i:4:p:45-84. 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: SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/depirgr.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.