TY  - JOUR
AU  - Lazear,Edward P.
AU  - Spletzer,James R.
TI  - Hiring, Churn and the Business Cycle
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17910
PY  - 2012
Y2  - March 2012
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17910
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17910.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Edward P. Lazear
Graduate School of Business
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
Tel: 650/723-9136
Fax: 650/723-0498
E-Mail: lazear@stanford.edu

James Spletzer
U.S. Census Bureau
E-Mail: James.R.Spletzer@census.gov
AB  - Churn, defined as replacing departing workers with new ones as workers move to more productive uses, is an important feature of labor dynamics. The majority of hiring and separation reflects churn rather than hiring for expansion or separation for contraction.  Using the JOLTS data, we show that churn decreased significantly during the most recent recession with almost four-fifths of the decline in hiring reflecting decreases in churn.  Reductions in churn have costs because they reflect a reduction in labor movement to higher valued uses.  We estimate the cost of reduced churn to be $208 billion. On an annual basis, this amounts to about .4% of GDP for a period of 3 1/2 years.
ER  -