Structural and Cyclical Trends in Net Employment over US Business Cycles, 1949-2009: Implications for the Next Recovery and Beyond

Abstract

This paper expands on the methodology of Groshen and Potter (2003) for studying cyclical and structural changes in the US economy and analyzes the net structural and cyclical employment trends in the US economy during the last 10 trough-to-trough business cycles from 1949 to the present. It illustrates that the US manufacturing sector and an increasing number of services sectors, including parts of the financial services sector, are experiencing structural employment declines. Structural employment gains in the US labor market are increasingly concentrated in the healthcare, education, food, and professional and technical services sectors and in the occupations related to these industries. The paper concludes that the improved operation of the US labor market during the 1990s has reversed itself in the 2000s, with negative long-term economic effects for the United States.

Keywords: Business cycles, structural change, unemployment duration, occupational/sectoral employment shifts, labor turnover, Okun’s Law relationship, Beveridge curves

JEL Classification: J21, J24, J62, J63, J64, O14, O51