Labor Demand on a Tight Leash

Abstract

"Although theory highlights search frictions in tight labor markets, standard models of labor demand do not account for labor market tightness. Given the universe of administrative employment data on Germany, we study the effect of labor market tightness on firms' labor demand using novel Bartik instruments that rely on predetermined firm shares and national shifts at the occupation level. In line with theory, the IV results suggest that a 10 percent increase in labor market tightness reduces firms' employment by 0.5 percent. When accounting for search externalities, we find that the individual-firm wage elasticity of labor demand reduces from -0.7 to -0.5 at the aggregate level. For the 2015 minimum wage introduction, the elasticities imply only modest disemployment effects mirroring empirical ex-post evaluations. Moreover, the doubling of tightness between 2012 and 2019 led to a significant slowdown in employment growth by 1.1 million jobs." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Bossler, M. & Popp, M. (2022): Labor Demand on a Tight Leash. (arXiv papers), 66 p. DOI:10.48550/arXiv.2203.05593