摘要：The picture of U.S. labor market dynamics is opaque. Empirical studies have
yielded contradictory findings and debates have emerged regarding their
implications. This paper aims at clarifying the picture, which is important for
the understanding of the operation of the labor market, for the study of
business cycles, for the explanation of wage behavior, and for the formulation
of policy. The paper determines what facts can be established, what are their
implications, and what remains to be further investigated. The main
contributions made here are: (i) Listing of data facts that can be agreed upon.
These indicate that there is considerable cyclicality and volatility of both
accessions to employment and separations from it. Hence, both are important for
the understanding of the business cycle. (ii) Presenting the business cycle
facts of key series. (iii) Pointing to specific gaps in the data picture:
disparities in the measurement of the sizeable flows between employment and the
pool of workers out of the labor force, disagreements about the relative
volatility of job finding and separation rates across data sets, and the fact
that the fit of the gross flows data with net employment growth data differs
across studies and is not high. The definite characterization of labor market
dynamics depends upon the closing of these data gaps.
