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Labor Economics

Selected Works

2016

Great Recession

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Are State Unemployment Insurance Reserves Sufficient For The Next Recession?, Christopher J. O'Leary, Kenneth J. Kline Jun 2016

Are State Unemployment Insurance Reserves Sufficient For The Next Recession?, Christopher J. O'Leary, Kenneth J. Kline

Christopher J. O'Leary

Regular state unemployment insurance (UI) benefits are paid from state reserves held in unemployment trust fund accounts at the U.S. Treasury. Employers covered by the federal-state UI system make contributions to reserve accounts based on taxable wages. The federal government provides incentives for forward funding of benefits to support UI as an automatic macroeconomic stabilizer in the economy. However, the Great Recession exhausted UI reserves for the majority of states, and not all of them have yet replenished those reserves. Based on patterns observed over the past 40 years, in this paper we simulate the effects on state and systemwide …


Do Recessions Accelerate Routine-Biased Technological Change? Evidence From Vacancy Postings, Brad J. Hershbein, Lisa B. Kahn Mar 2016

Do Recessions Accelerate Routine-Biased Technological Change? Evidence From Vacancy Postings, Brad J. Hershbein, Lisa B. Kahn

Brad J. Hershbein

We show that skill requirements in job vacancy postings differentially increased in MSAs that were hit hard by the Great Recession, relative to less hard-hit areas, and that these differences across MSAs persist through the end of 2015. The increases are prevalent within occupations, more pronounced in the non-traded sector, driven by both within-firm upskilling and substitution from older to newer firms, accompanied by increases in capital stock, and are evident in realized employment. We argue that this evidence reflects the restructuring of production toward moreskilled workers and routine-labor saving technologies, and that the Great Recession accelerated this process.