We utilise a rich set of regional labour market variables to explain regional variation in Norwegian manufacturing wages. In particular, regional indicators of labour market conditions are computed from survey data in which respondents are asked to evaluate local employment opportunities. We find that average reported satisfaction with local job prospects and other survey-based indicators perfo...

Estimates of the natural rate of unemployment are important in many macroeconomic models used by economists and policy advisors. This paper shows how such estimates might benefit from closer attention to regional developments. Regional business cycles do not move in lockstep and greater dispersion among regions can affect estimates of the natural rate of unemployment. There is microeconomic evi...

labor dislocation. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, a significant portion of the potential labor pool remains largely unnoticed. The underemployed and the discouraged—those who have given up trying to find work—are additional indicators of labor dislocation. These are individuals whose diminishing skills and reduced earning capacity may linger well into the recovery. For every five unem...

• an official unemployment rate of 14.2% vs. 9% for non-disabled – larger than any other protected class of citizens [3]; • the average duration of unemployment was 25 weeks vs. 21 weeks for non-disabled [3]; • higher levels of under-employment including [4]; ◦ 7.8% involuntary part-time workers for AWDs vs. 5.5% for non-disabled; and ◦ 11.5% experienced reduction in wages; i.e., full-time earn...

This paper explores the evolution of the labor market across the business cycle and specifically the relationship between the unemployment rate and the average duration of unemployment. Labor market recoveries have long been thought of as lagging recoveries in broad economic activity. In particular, the unemployment rate peaks several months after the official business cycle trough and the aver...

The second and third generation of immigrants have been the centre of a lively debate about the economic integration of immigrants into their host societies, but there is little empirical evidence on the German case. In this study I comprehensively portray the labour market outcomes of second generation immigrants in Germany. Special attention is attributed to observable heterogeneity in terms ...

This paper presents a simple model of wage bargaining and employment ows designed to address the e ects of policies to increase the rate of exit to employment of the long-term unemployed. Exit rates from long and short-term unemployment have two e ects on the unemployment rate: a positive one as high exit rates strengthen current employees' bargaining positions and thus wages and a negative one...

IN AN EARLIER ISSUE OF Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, George Perry argued that the Phillips curve, measured in the conventional way, had shifted to the right in recent years, and estimated that a 4 percent overall unemployment rate would produce about 1 /2 percentage points more inflation per year than was the case in the mid-1950s.1 Perry's conclusion was based on a wage equation that ...

We present a generalization of the standard random-search model of unemployment in which firms hire multiple workers and in which the hiring process is time-consuming as well as costly. We follow Stole and Zwiebel (1996a,b) and assume that wages are determined by continuous bargaining between the firm and its employees. This generates a non-trivial dispersion of firm sizes; when firms’ producti...

In this paper we show how time-varying unemployment benefits can generate equilibrium wage dispersion in an economy in which identical firms post wages and homogeneous risk-averse workers search for acceptable offers. We model a two-tier unemployment benefit system that is similar to real-world unemployment insurance programs. We assume that the unemployed initially receive benefits at rate b. ...