Classifying Worker Types in the U.S. Labor Market

Abstract

labor market as they cycle through various jobs and weather unemployment spells. What systematic patterns in employment histories do we see in U.S. data? Our recent paper (Gregory, Menzio, and Wiczer, 2021) documents the existence of several types of workers who are differently affected by job loss and by the onset of a recession.1 Classifying workers in this way can help resolve several puzzles in economics related to labor market dynamics. We use data from the Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program to classify workers by their labor market histories. This dataset consists of a random sample of employment records from 1997 to 2014 Classifying Worker Types in the U.S. Labor Market