TY  - JOUR
AU  - Elsby,Michael W.
AU  - Hobijn,Bart
AU  - Sahin,Aysegul
TI  - The Labor Market in the Great Recession
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15979
PY  - 2010
Y2  - May 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15979
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15979.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Michael W. Elsby
University of Edinburgh
School of Economics
31 Buccleuch Place
Edinburgh
EH8 9JT
United Kingdom
Tel: 011 44 131 650 8361
Fax: 011 44 131 650 4514
E-Mail: Mike.Elsby@ed.ac.uk

Bart Hobijn
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
Economic Research Department, Mailstop 1130
101 Market Street, 11th floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
Tel: 415 974 2314
Fax: 415 974 2168
E-Mail: bart.hobijn@sf.frb.org

Aysegul Sahin
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Research & Statistics Group
33 Liberty Street
New York, NY  10045
Tel: 212-720-5145
E-Mail: Aysegul.Sahin@ny.frb.org
AB  - From the perspective of a wide range of labor market outcomes, the recession that began in 2007 represents the deepest downturn in the postwar era. Early on, the nature of labor market adjustment displayed a notable resemblance to that observed in past severe downturns. During the latter half of 2009, however, the path of adjustment exhibited important departures from that seen during and after prior deep recessions. Recent data point to two warning signs going forward. First, the record rise in long-term unemployment may yield a persistent residue of long-term unemployed workers with weak search effectiveness. Second, conventional estimates suggest that the extension of Emergency Unemployment Compensation may have led to a modest increase in unemployment. Despite these forces, we conclude that the problems facing the U.S. labor market are unlikely to be as severe as the European unemployment problem of the 1980s.
ER  -