The paper uses cross-country data from Latin America and the OECD to test the predictions of a simple efficiency wage model (Krebs and Maloney 1998) about the share of employment in self-employment and the rate of labor turnover. It finds support for the model and finds numerous demographic, economic and labor market institutions to be important to determining both self-employment and turnover....

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has begun a new survey to collect and publish job openings and labor turnover data. This new survey, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, began collecting data in March 2000 and will soon publish estimates for the first time. Published estimates will include rates and levels for job openings, hires, and separations. These data will add to th...

Search theory suggests that early career job changes on balance lead to better matches that benefit both workers and firms, but this may not hold in teacher labor markets characterized by salary rigidities, barriers to entry, and substantial differences in working conditions that are difficult for institutions to alter. Of particular concern to education policy makers is the possibility that te...

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) is a new program being fielded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to compile measures of job openings and employee turnover for nonfarm businesses using a sample of 16,000 establishments. The job opening, employee turnover, and employment data are collected on a monthly basis. Employee turnover includes hires, and three categories of separations...

This paper studies the role of labor market institutions on unemployment and on the cyclical properties of job flows. We construct an intertemporal general equilibrium model with search unemployment and endogenous job turnover, and examine the consequences of introducing an unemployment benefit, a firing cost and a downward wage rigidity. The model is able to reproduce the main cyclical propert...

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) is a new data source of the Bureau of Labor Statistics that estimates monthly vacancies, hires, and separations. It has quickly become a useful tool for studying the labor market. This chapter summarizes its aggregate and micro-level evidence, including the relations of vacancies and worker flows to unemployment and other measures of labor mark...

[Excerpt] In this paper, we show how labor turnover considerations can be integrated into the human investment theory of migration and demonstrate that such a model provides a much better explanation for migration rates into major metropolitan areas than the conventionally-used unemployment rate. The method used here may be of interest as well to researchers working on other human investment pr...