TY - JOUR AU - Davis,Steven J. AU - Haltiwanger,John C. AU - Jarmin,Ron S. AU - Lerner,Josh AU - Miranda,Javier TI - Private Equity and Employment JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 17399 PY - 2011 Y2 - September 2011 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17399 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17399.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Steven J. Davis Booth School of Business The University of Chicago 5807 South Woodlawn Avenue Chicago, IL 60637 Tel: 773/702-7312 Fax: 773/834-0733 E-Mail: Steven.Davis@ChicagoBooth.edu John C. Haltiwanger Department of Economics University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 Tel: 301/405-3504 Fax: 301/405-3542 E-Mail: haltiwan@econ.umd.edu Ron S. Jarmin Center for Economic Studies U.S. Census Bureau 4600 Silver Hill Road Washington, DC 20233 Tel: 301.763.1858 Fax: 301.763.5935 E-Mail: ron.s.jarmin@census.gov Josh Lerner Harvard Business School Rock Center 214 Boston, MA 02163 Tel: 617/495-6065 Fax: 617/496-7357 E-Mail: jlerner@hbs.edu Javier Miranda U.S. Bureau of the Census Center for Economic Studies 4600 Silver Hill Road Washington, DC 20233 Tel: 301-763-6466 E-Mail: javier.miranda@census.gov AB - Private equity critics claim that leveraged buyouts bring huge job losses. To investigate this claim, we construct and analyze a new dataset that covers U.S. private equity transactions from 1980 to 2005. We track 3,200 target firms and their 150,000 establishments before and after acquisition, comparing outcomes to controls similar in terms of industry, size, age, and prior growth. Relative to controls, employment at target establishments declines 3 percent over two years post buyout and 6 percent over five years. The job losses are concentrated among public-to-private buyouts, and transactions involving firms in the service and retail sectors. But target firms also create more new jobs at new establishments, and they acquire and divest establishments more rapidly. When we consider these additional adjustment margins, net relative job losses at target firms are less than 1 percent of initial employment. In contrast, the sum of gross job creation and destruction at target firms exceeds that of controls by 13 percent of employment over two years. In short, private equity buyouts catalyze the creative destruction process in the labor market, with only a modest net impact on employment. The creative destruction response mainly involves a more rapid reallocation of jobs across establishments within target firms. ER -