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Using a census of all workers in private establishments in the formal sector in Mexico to track workers and establishments over time, this paper presents the first Mexican worker and job flow statistics. The data allow for comparing these flows across time, space, and worker characteristics. Although many patterns are similar to those documented in developing countries, the analysis uncovers patterns that have potentially important policy implications. The authors compare the results to the literature, illustrate how the statistics change during times of reform and crisis, and present novel findings that contribute to the broader literature on worker reallocations.

Employee --- Employment --- Employment Dynamics --- Firm Size --- Job Destruction --- Labor Market --- Labor Markets --- Private Sector --- Social Protections and Labor --- Worker --- Workers

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In this paper the authors use a search and matching model of multi-sector labor markets, to understand the channels through which economic shocks affect labor market outcomes in developing countries. In the model workers can be employed in agriculture, formal or informal urban jobs, or unemployed. Economic shocks are manifested as either increased turbulence in the formal/informal sectors or a decrease in overall sectoral productivity. By calibrating the model to Indonesia and Mexico, the authors are able to understand how the 1998 Indonesian crisis and the 2001 Mexican recession translated into labor market outcomes. They then venture to simulate how the current financial crisis might affect the allocation of labor and earnings across sectors, in these countries. The results suggest that in both countries past crises have increased the degree of turbulence of the formal sector, increasing job destruction. However, while in Indonesia the crisis affected the overall formal sector productivity, this was not the case in Mexico. This explains the larger blow to formal wages - relative to the size of the shock- witnessed by Indonesian workers. The response of the informal sector was also different: In both countries the informal sector was able to act as a buffer, as relative earnings increased. However, while in Mexico it became much harder to find informal sector opportunities and easier to keep the job once found; in Indonesia turbulence in the informal sector increased substantially increasing the job destruction rate of informal jobs and limiting the cushioning role that the informal sector might have played. The agricultural sector was spared from the shock in both countries. In Indonesia, it actually benefited from an unusual exogenous increase in the price of rise. The simulations show that if either the informal or agricultural sectors are spared from the shocks, large reallocations of labor might occur, and the overall effect of the shock is smaller. Instead, if these sectors can't buffer the shock, the reallocation of labor is much smaller, but earnings in the formal sector drop substantially. The authors also explore the impact of alternative policies. They find that in relatively flexible markets where informality can be seen more as a choice rather than as queuing, unemployment benefits and informal employment subsidies may have paradoxical effects, by discouraging formal search. Instead, policies targeted at creating informal employment and boosting formal TFP growth have the desired effects.

Average wages --- Banks & Banking Reform --- Economic Shocks --- Economic Theory & Research --- Employment subsidies --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Human capital --- Informal employment --- Informal sector --- Job creation --- Job destruction --- Job destruction rate --- Jobs --- Labor Market --- Labor Market Outcomes --- Labor Markets --- Labor Policies --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Manufacturing wages --- Markets and Market Access --- Payroll taxes --- Public employment --- Social Protections and Labor --- Unemployed --- Unemployment --- Unemployment benefits --- Workers

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The authors study the dynamics of three developing country labor markets using recent advances in the estimation of continuous time Markov processes. They first examine the flows of workers among five states: three types of paid labor, unemployment, and out of the labor force. The authors find a high degree of commonality in patterns of worker flows among the three countries and attempt to compare the flexibility of the markets by examining an index of overall mobility. Second, they seek to establish whether the issues of advanced country labor markets apply to developing country markets or whether the latter constitute a different phylum. Paralleling the mainstream literature on the role of being out of the labor force as discouraged unemployment, the authors then identify some common stylized facts about the role of the informal self-employed and salaried sectors and to what degree they serve as a holding pattern versus a desirable alternative to formal sector work. In the process, the authors identify very strong differences in mobility patterns between men and women and attempt to shed some light on whether these differences arise from discrimination or perhaps instead the constraints imposed by household responsibilities. Finally, they study labor market adjustment across the business cycle in Mexico and identify patterns of job creation and destruction among the three paid sectors and confirm the mainstream view of the role of out of the labor force as a procyclical phenomenon.

Business Cycle --- Disguised Unemployment --- Employment Spell --- Estimated Parameters --- Informal Sector --- Job --- Job Creation --- Job Destruction --- Job Destruction Rate --- Labor --- Labor Force --- Labor Legislation --- Labor Market --- Labor Market Adjustment --- Labor Markets --- Labor Policies --- Social Protections and Labor --- Unemployed --- Unemployment --- Unemployment Spells --- Worker --- Workers

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We read search theory's unemployment equilibrium condition as an Iso-Unemployment Curve(IUC).The IUC is the locus of job destruction rates and expected unemployment durations rendering the same unemployment level. A country's position along the curve reveals its preferences over the destruction-duration mix, while its distance from the origin indicates the unemployment level at which such preferences are satisfied Using a panel of 20 OECD countries over 1985-2008, we find employment protection legislation to have opposing efects on destructions and durations, while the effects of the remaining key institutional factors on both variables tend to reinforce each other. Implementing the right reforms could reduce job destruction rates by about 0.05 to 0.25 percentage points and shorten unemployment spells by around 10 to 60 days. Consistent with this, unemployment rates would decline by between 0.75 and 5.5 percentage points, depending on a country's starting position.

Unemployment --- Labor market --- Employees --- Market, Labor --- Supply and demand for labor --- Markets --- Joblessness --- Employment (Economic theory) --- Full employment policies --- Labor supply --- Manpower policy --- Underemployment --- Econometric models. --- Supply and demand --- Labor --- Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies: General --- Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search --- Labor Demand --- Demand and Supply of Labor: General --- Labour --- income economics --- Job destruction --- Unemployment rate --- Job creation --- Labor markets --- Belgium

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This paper studies the effect of two labor market institutions, unemployment insurance (UI) and job search assistance (JSA), on the output cost and welfare cost of recessions. The paper develops a tractable incomplete-market model with search unemployment, skill depreciation during unemployment, and idiosyncratic as well as aggregate labor market risk. The theoretical analysis shows that an increase in JSA and a reduction in UI reduce the output cost of recessions by making the labor market more fluid along the job finding margin and thus making the economy more resilient to macroeconomic shocks. In contarst, the effect of JSA and UI on the welfare cost of recessions is in general ambiguous. The paper also provides a quantitative appliation to the German labor market reforms of 2003-2005, the so-called Hartz reforms, which improved JSA (Hartz III reform) and reduced UI (Hartz IV reform). According to the baseline calibration, the two labor market reforms led to a substantial reduction in the output cost of recessions and a moderate reduction in the welfare cost of recessions in Germany.

Labor market. --- Employees --- Market, Labor --- Supply and demand for labor --- Markets --- Supply and demand --- Labor market --- E-books --- Labor --- Macroeconomics: Consumption --- Saving --- Wealth --- Employment --- Unemployment --- Wages --- Intergenerational Income Distribution --- Aggregate Human Capital --- Aggregate Labor Productivity --- Incomplete Markets --- Human Capital --- Skills --- Occupational Choice --- Labor Productivity --- Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search --- Demand and Supply of Labor: General --- Particular Labor Markets: General --- Labor Demand --- Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs: General --- Labour --- income economics --- Labor markets --- Labor market institutions --- Job destruction --- Germany