1 LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS Harvard University Why Is the Unemployment Rate So Very High near Full Employment? IN A WELL-KNOWN PAPER in one of the inaugural issues of the Brookings Papers, Robert Hall posed the question "Why Is the Unemployment Rate So High at Full Employment?" 1 Hall, writing in the context of the 3.5 percent unemployment rate that prevailed in 1969, answered his question by explaining that the full-employment rate was so high because of the normal turnover that is inevitable in a dynamic economy where some sectors are expanding and others are contracting and because of the special problems of certain disadvantaged groups. Hall himself was pessimistic about the prospects for maintaining unemployment consistently below 4 percent through expansionary policies. But he raised the prospect that successful structural policies could do so. While aspirations became attuned to expectations as unemployment rose during the 1970s, the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978 nonetheless set an unemploymentarget of 4 percent for Today, four yesws into an economic recovery, the unemployment rate hovers around 7 percent. Over the past decade, it has averaged 7.6 I am grateful to David Cutler and Louise Sheiner for extremely capable research assistance and useful discussions. Larry Katz and Jim Poterba provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I have benefited even more than usual from the comments of members of the Brookings Panel. The National Science Foundation provided financial support. A data appendix is available from the author on request. 1. Robert E. Hall, "Why Is the Unemployment Rate So High at Full Employment?," BPEA, 3:1970, pp The title of this paper is patterned after Hall's title. The differences reflect increases in unemployment over the past fifteen years and some doubts about just how close the American economy currently is to full employment. 339
2 340 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2:1986 percent and has never fallen below 5.8 percent. Even most forecasts that call for steady growth over the next five years do not foresee unemployment rates dipping back below 6 percent. It is helpful to recall that unemployment peaked at 7.2 percent during the relatively severe recession of While some of the difference between recent and past levels of unemployment has resulted from cyclical developments, it is clear that a substantial increase in the normal or natural rate of unemployment has taken place. Where Kennedy-Johnson economists set 4 percent as an interim full-employment target, contemporary policymakers would regard even the temporary achievement of 6 percent unemployment as a great success. This paper describes and explains the substantial recent increase in normal unemployment. The first part of the paper assesses the relationship between unemployment and other indicators of labor market tightness and describes changes in the composition of the unemployed population. The data reveal that the level of unemployment consistent with any given level of vacancies, capacity utilization, or change in inflation has increased significantly over time. It appears that little of this movement can be traced to measurement difficulties in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey. Rather, increases in unemployment are a serious problem because they are concentrated among mature men, job losers, and the long-term unemployed. The portrayal of rising unemployment as the consequence of an increase in the share of secondary workers in the labor force that was popular during the 1970s is no longer accurate. The second and more speculative part of the paper draws on the dramatic variations in state and regional economic performance that have taken place over the past fifteen years in an effort to get at the causes of rising unemployment. It links observed increases in unemployment with structural changes in the economy that have lowered employment in high-wage sectors and increased it in low-wage sectors. The structural changes include both macroeconomic developments that have reduced the demand for the output of high-wage industries and labor market pressures, particularly in unionized sectors, that have pushed up wages in sectors where they were already high. I conclude that reversing the dramatic sectoral shocks of the last few years can make an important contribution to reducing unemployment.
3 Lawrence H. Summers 341 Increasing Unemployment in the United States Figure 1 depicts the evolution of the total U.S. unemployment rate and the unemployment rate for married men since the Korean War. The fairly steady increase in both rates is interrupted only during the 1960s. While the amplitude of fluctuations in the unemployment rate has increased, it is also clear that the normal level of unemployment has risen. A conspicuous feature of the data is that the rate for married men has increased in tandem with the overall rate. Table 1 presents information on the unemployment rate and the employment ratio (the ratio of employed adults to the total adult population) over the seven business cycles since Again, a secular increase in unemployment is evident. With the exception of the boom of the 1960s and the early 1970s, each cycle has higher peak, trough, and average unemployment rates than the one that preceded it. Indeed, the unemployment rate at the last peak, in July of 1981, was comparable with the rates reached at most previous cyclical troughs. Unemployment at the next peak is not knowable. But most forecasts do not call for substantial declines. The most recent Congressional Budget Office forecast, which assumes fairly steady growth uninterrupted by recession for the next five years, calls for unemployment to decline only to 6.0 percent by The secular increase in unemployment contrasts sharply with the behavior of the employment ratio, which has trended upwards and is today close to its historical peak. The rise reflects the rapid increase in the labor force participation of adult women, from 37.6 percent in 1960 to 43.3 percent in 1970, 51.3 percent in 1980, and 54.7 percent in Since 1973, both unemployment and employment have grown quite rapidly. Total employment increased by 25 percent between 1973 and Unemployment can increase for either cyclical or structural reasons. Before I turn to an analysis of changes in the structure of the labor market, it is necessary to address the possibility that rising unemploy- 2. Congressional Budget Office, The Economic and Budget Outlook: An Update (Government Printing Office, August 1986).
4 342 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2:1986 Figure 1. Aggregate and Married Male Unemployment Rates, Percent / \ Married males~~ 'I Year Sources: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Handbook of Labor Statistics (June 1986), table 25. ment is merely a by-product of weakness in aggregate demand in recent years. A natural way to test that possibility is to examine how the unemployment rate has moved relative to other measures of cyclical conditions and to consider whether the relationship between unemployment and inflation has changed. Table 2 examines the trend in unemployment relative to two cyclical indicators-vacancies and capacity utilization. The results indicate that at any given level of vacancies or of capacity utilization, both overall unemployment and the unemployment of middle-aged men have in-
5 Lawrence H. Summers 343 Table 1. Increasing Unemployment over the Business Cycle, July 1953-July 1986a Percent Peak Trough Average Employ- Employ- Employ- Unem- ment- Unem- ment- Unem- mentployment population ployment population ployment population Cycle (peak to peak) rate ratiob rate ratiob rate ratiob Jul Jul Aug Mar Apr Nov Dec Oct Nov Dec Jan June Jul Jul c 60.1c Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings, various issues. a. Peak unemployment is the rate at the beginning of the cycle. Trough unemployment is measured at the cyclical trough. The dating of the cycles is based on National Bureau of Economic Research chronology. b. Employment is total civilian employment as measured from the Current Population Survey. Population is the civilian noninstitutional population over sixteen years of age. c. The cyclical peak has not yet been observed in this expansion. creased sharply.3 Over the past two decades total unemployment appears to have increased by between 0.13 and 0.17 percentage point per year after adjustment for changes in cyclical conditions. Similar increases from a much lower base show up in the unemployment rate of mature men. Of the roughly 3.5 percentage point increase in total unemployment between its 1969 low point of 3.5 percent and the present rate, the equations indicate that between 2.5 and 2.9 percentage points are attributable to structural factors captured by the time trend, with the relatively small remainder being attributable to changes in the capacity utilization and vacancies cyclical indicators. Estimation of Phillips curves for various periods does not yield sufficiently precise estimates of the natural rate of unemployment to permit definitive statements about its evolution. But the data do suggest that, particularly when the mature male unemployment rate is used, the natural rate has increased. A calculation is instructive. Between See James L. Medoff, "U.S. Labor Markets: Imbalance, Wage Growth, and Productivity in the 1970s," BPEA, 1:1983, pp , for an earlier treatment of changes in the relationship between unemployment and vacancies. As Katharine Abraham, "What Does the Help-Wanted Index Measure?" (Brookings, 1986), emphasizes, measuring vacancies is not an easy problem. The index used here is the Conference Board Help- Wanted Index adjusted as suggested by Abraham for changes in competition in the newspaper industry and the occupational composition of the labor force.
6 344 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2:1986 Table 2. Corrected Unemployment Trends, Various Periods, a Percentage points Unemployment rate Males, Sample aged period Control Total Vacancy rate (0.009) (0.011) Vacancy rate (0.030) (0.028) Capacity utilization (0.025) (0.020) Source: Author's calculations based on data from BLS, Employment and Earnings, various issues. a. Regressions of the unemployment rate on a constant, several controls, and a time trend. The controls indicated are the contemporaneous index (vacancy rates or capacity utilization) and the first two lags of the series. Vacancy rates are derived from the Conference Board index of help-wanted advertisements with adjustments made as suggested in Katharine Abraham, "What Does the Help-Wanted Index Measure?" (Brookings, 1986). Standard errors are in parentheses. and 1974, the inflation rate as measured using the GNP deflator increased by 6.4 percentage points, while the unemployment rate of men aged thirty-five to forty-four averaged 2.2 percent. Between 1980 and 1985, the inflation rate declined by 5.7 percentage points while the same unemployment rate averaged 5.5 percent. If one assumes, in line with the data, that a reduction of 1 percentage point in the inflation rate requires 1.5 percentage point years of extra unemployment, the implied natural rate is 3.2 percent for the earlier period and 4.0 percent for the later one, an increase of one-fourth. To the extent that supply shocks were partially responsible for changes in the inflation rate over both periods, the calculation understates the change in the natural rate. On balance, the evidence suggests that the current high level of unemployment, particularly the rate for mature men, cannot easily be explained as a consequence of a cyclical decline in demand. I therefore turn to an exploration of structural factors that could possibly account for rising unemployment. CHANGES IN LABOR FORCE COMPOSITION One explanation for increases in the unemployment rate is that the composition of the labor force has changed so that the share of groups with high unemployment rates has increased. In that case, measured
7 Lawrence H. Summers 345 unemployment might increase even though the risk of unemployment for any particular individual with given characteristics had not changed. It would also be true that any given level of unemployment would indicate less labor market slack than had once been the case and so presumably should be a cause for less concern. George Perry put forward an argument of this type in considering the breakdown in the Phillips curve relation during the late 1960s.4 He suggested that the increasing share of workers from groups whose unemployment was typically relatively high-women and teenagershad raised the level of measured unemployment corresponding to any given amount of labor market slack. Perry constructed an alternative unemployment series by taking a fixed weighted average of the unemployment rates of different age-sex groups, thus controlling for changes in labor force composition. Since his introduction of this notion, the construction of "Perry weighted" unemployment rates has become standard in the estimation of Phillips curves and in discussions of changes in the natural rate of unemployment.5 There is no reason why the logic of adjusting for changes in labor force composition should be applied only to changes in its age-sex composition. Arguments similar to those originally made by Perry can be applied to other changes in labor force composition as well. Some of the changes work in the opposite direction to Perry's demographic adjustment. More educated workers tend to have lower unemployment rates than do less educated workers, and the labor force has become more educated over the past thirty years. Likewise, mining, construction, and manufacturing tend to have higher average unemployment rates than do services, trade, and finance, and the share of the labor force engaged in the latter pursuits has increased. Thus it is not clear a priori that changes in the composition of the labor force have tended to increase measured unemployment. Table 3 presents estimates of adjustments to the measured unemployment rate for changes in labor composition by age and sex, marital 4. See George L. Perry, "Changing Labor Markets and Inflation," BPEA, 3:1970, pp For calculations of the natural rate of unemployment and potential GNP that rely heavily on demographically adjusted unemployment rates, see Robert J. Gordon, "Inflation, Flexible Exchange Rates, and the Natural Rate of Unemployment," in Martin Neil Baily, ed., Workers, Jobs, and Inflation (Brookings, 1982), pp
8 346 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2:1986 Table 3. Changes in Labor Force Composition and the Unemployment Rate, Percentage points Adjustmenta Unemployment Marital Year rate Age-sex status Schooling Industry n.a. n.a n.a n.a n.a n.a n.a n.a n.a Source: Author's calculations. Actual unemployment rate and data before 1984 used in calculations of adjustments are from BLS, Handbook of Labor Statistics, Bulletin 2217 (June 1985). Unemployment rates by demographic group are listed in table 27, pp ; rates by marital status are in table 50, pp ; rates by education are in table 62, p. 169; rates by industry are in table 30, p. 77. Weights for demographic civilian labor force status are from table 4, pp ; weights for marital status are from table 6, pp ; weights for educational attainment are from table 61, p. 164; weights for industrial composition are from table 30, p. 76. Statistics for 1984 and 1985 are from BLS, Employment and Earnings, vol. 33 (January 1986). n.a. Not available. a. The adjustment for each year is calculated by creating an adjusted unemployment rate using 1965 labor force shares as weights. (See equation 1 in text.) The adjustment for changing labor force composition is then the difference between the actual and the adjusted unemployment rate.
9 Lawrence H. Summers 347 status, schooling, and primary industry. The adjustment for each year is calculated by first creating an adjusted unemployment rate as a fixed weighted average of group-specific unemployment rates using 1965 labor force shares as weights. That is, (1) A URt = E si65 URit. The adjusted unemployment rate, A UR, is the unemployment rate that would prevail in a given year if each labor force group had its 1965 share, Si65, of the labor force. The adjustment for changing labor force composition is then the difference between the actual and the adjusted unemployment rate. While it would be ideal to estimate the adjustment using a single decomposition of the labor force into subgroups, it is not possible to do so with the available data. The table therefore presents four separate adjustments. The age-sex adjustment is based on a decomposition of the labor force into the fourteen categories used by Perry.6 The marital status adjustment divides the labor force into six categories-men and women who are single, married with spouse present, and widowed, separated, or divorced. The schooling adjustment is based on a division of the labor force into six categories ranging from workers with less than five years of schooling to those completing four or more years of college.7 Finally, the industry adjustment is based on a decomposition of the experienced labor force into categories corresponding to the one-digit standard industrial classification (SIC) code.8 The changing age-sex composition of the labor force can account for relatively little of the increase in unemployment in recent years. The adjustment (relative to 1965) peaked at 0.7 percentage point in the mid- 1970s and has declined since then to only 0.3 point in The decline in the adjustment reflects two developments: the decline in the labor force share of teenagers and the declining relative unemployment rate of women. The labor force share of teenagers has fallen from 7.9 percent 6. The categories are men and women aged sixteen to nineteen, twenty to twenty-four, twenty-five to thirty-four, thirty-five to forty-four, forty-five to fifty-four, fifty-five to sixtyfour, and sixty-five and over. 7. The schooling adjustment is calculated using data for March of each year because questions on educational attainment are asked only in the March CPS. 8. The industry adjustment is not strictly parallel to the others since it is an adjustment to the unemployment rate of experienced workers. This noncomparability is inevitable given that new entrants to the labor force cannot meaningfully be assigned an industry.
10 348 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2:1986 in 1965 to 6.8 percent in 1985, a decline that is assumed here to have no effect on the youth unemployment rate. If, as Michael Wachter has argued, crowding effects cause increases in the youth unemployment rate, the decline in the adjustment in recent years would be significantly greater.9 The dramatic change in the composition of the labor force in recent years has been the increase in female labor force participation. If unemployment rates for men and women had maintained the pattern they exhibited in the 1960s, the measured unemployment rate would have increased substantially. But, as I discuss later, the gap between the unemployment rates of men and women has narrowed in recent years, so the effect is not very large. More importanthan the age-sex adjustment is the adjustment for the changing marital status of the labor force. It rose to 0.6 percentage point in the mid-1970s but, unlike the age-sex adjustment, has not turned down since. The major marital status change is the drop in the fraction of men in the labor force who are married. In 1965, 18 percent of the male labor force had never been married, compared with 27 percent in Given that unemployment rates were three times as high for single as for married men in 1985, the effect of reductions in the share of the labor force that is married is quite substantial. 10 Quantitatively, the most important adjustment for changes in the composition of the labor force involves education. Assuming no changes in group-specific unemployment rates, recent increases in education should have reduced the unemployment rate by 2.1 percentage points between 1965 and That adjustment dwarfs the demographic and marital status corrections. 11 Over the past twenty years the share of the labor force that received some college education nearly doubled, from 22 to 40 percent, while the share with less than an eighth-gradeducation fell from 23 percent to only 7 percent. 9. See Michael L. Wachter, "Intermediate Swings in Labor-Force Participation," BPEA, 2:1977, pp Wachter forecast, on the basis of demographiconsiderations, a significant decline in the natural rate of unemployment in the early 1980s. 10. The adjustment is not independent of the previous adjustment for changes in the age-sex composition of the labor force. It also reflects increases in the share of women in the labor force and to some extent reflects changes in the age structure of the labor force. The rise in the proportion of single men noted in the text is particularly striking in light of the decline in the share of teenagers and young men in the labor force. 11. Robert M. Solow made this point in "Macro-policy and Full Employment," in Eli Ginzberg, ed., Jobs for Americans (Prentice Hall, 1976), pp
11 Lawrence H. Summers 349 It is arguable that the educational adjustment made here is inappropriate because the differentials in unemployment between different educational groups reflect not the effects of education but rather differences in the innate skills of more and less educated workers. Undoubtedly, the adjustment calculated here is an overestimate of the true effect of increased educational attainment on unemployment for this reason, but the overestimate may not be large. The premise of policies directed at discouraging teenagers from dropping out of high school is that more schooling means less unemployment. And the fact that the relative unemployment rate of college graduates has dropped as their number has swelled casts doubt on the importance of sorting effects of the type noted above. Finally, the industry adjustment shown in the final column of the table indicates that changes in the industrial mix, particularly the decline in the share of employment in the volatile manufacturing sector, has also worked to reduce unemployment. In some recent years, when manufacturing has been weak because of adverse cyclical conditions, the adjustment has been quantitatively significant, reaching 0.4 percentage point in While it is inappropriate to sum the various adjustments in table 3 because they are not independent, it seems clear that mix effects cannot account for the recent increase in unemployment. The mix effects that should have led to decreases in unemployment, increases in education and reductions in manufacturing employment are quantitatively much more important than the demographic mix effects that are emphasized in most discussions of rising unemployment. Taking into account the changing composition of the labor force does not reduce and may even increase the size of the rise in unemploymenthat must be explained. WHOSE UNEMPLOYMENT HAS INCREASED? Since changes in labor force composition cannot account for increases in employment, it is natural to ask how the increase in unemployment in recent years has been distributed across the population. Table 4 presents unemployment rates for various subgroups of the population in 1965, 1974, 1978, and The years 1965, 1974, and 1978 are contrasted with 1985 because each is a year of moderately low but not cyclically minimal unemployment. The broad conclusions that emerge in the discussion are not sensitive to the choice of years.
12 350 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2:1986 Table 4. Unemployment Rates for Population Subgroups, 1965, 1974, 1978, and 1985 Percent Category Total Age-sex Males, Males, Males, Males, Males, Males, Males, 65 and over All males Females, Females, Females, Females, Females, Females, Females, 65 and over All females Marital status Single men Married men Divorced, separated, or widowed men Single women Married women Divorced, separated, or widowed women Educationa Less than five years Five to eight years One to three years of high school Four years of high school One to three years of college Four or more years of college Sources: BLS, Handbook of Labor Statistics (June 1985). Unemployment rates by age-sex are from table 27, pp ; by marital status, from table 50, pp ; and by education, from table 62, p Data for 1985 are taken from Employment and Earnings, vol. 33 (January 1986). a. Education statistics for 1985 were obtained by telephone from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
13 Lawrence H. Summers 351 The most dramatic relative increases in unemployment have occurred among prime-aged males. While aggregate unemployment increased by 18 percent, from 6.1 percent to 7.2 percent, between 1978 and 1985, the unemployment rate for men aged thirty-five to forty-four increased by 75 percent, from 2.8 percent to 4.9 percent. The increase occurred despite a rise in that cohort's labor force nonparticipation rate from 4.3 to 5.0 percent. A similar but less pronounced increase in unemployment is observed for men in the other under-sixty-five age groups. It is noteworthy that even going as far back as 1965, the conclusion that unemployment among mature men has risen disproportionately remains valid. Unemployment rates for women have risen relatively little, despite huge increases in labor force participation rates. For women aged thirtyfive to forty-four, the unemployment rate increased only 10 percent, from 5.0 to 5.5 percent, during The relative increases in unemployment were somewhat smaller for younger women and somewhat greater for older women. There is a substantial difference between the experience of young men and that of young women. While increases in the unemployment of women aged sixteen to nineteen and twenty to twenty-four have been relatively small since 1974, there have been significant increases in the unemployment rate of young men, particularly those aged sixteen to nineteen. The total unemployment rate is a weighted average of the unemployment rates of different demographic groups with weights depending on their shares of the labor force. A simple way of combining the effects of changing demographic composition and changing group-specific unemployment rates is to ask what contribution different demographic groups make to total unemployment in different years. The contribution of a given group to total unemployment is the product of its labor force share and its unemployment rate. Performing this calculation reveals two significant developments. First, the amount of unemployment attributable to teenagers has declined in recent years. Teenagers contributed 1.2 percentage points to the 4.5 percent unemployment rate in 1965, 1.5 points to the 5.6 percent unemployment rate in 1974, 1.5 points to the 6.1 percent unemployment rate in 1978, but only 1.3 points to the 7.2 percent unemployment rate in Second, the bulk of the increase in unemployment in recent years is attributable to men aged twenty and above, whose contribution to total unemployment increased from 1.9 percentage points in 1965 to 2.3 points in 1978 and 3.3 points in 1985.
14 352 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2:1986 Data on unemployment rates for different marital status groups reveal that unemployment has increased most dramatically among married and formerly married men. The rate for these groups increased by about 50 percent between 1978 and For single men and women and for married women the data reveal only very minor increases in unemployment since These patterns cast doubt on the arguments that increases in measured unemployment are primarily the result of a rise in the fraction of the population on the margin between working and not working.'2 Surely mature men, especially those who are married, are the group for whom it is least plausible that social changes have made marginalabor force attachment attractive. Finally, the breakdown of unemployment rates by education in table 4 reveals that the extent of the increase in unemployment over the past decade declines steadily with increased education. The unemployment rate of high school drop-outs increased by more than one-fourth between 1978 and 1985, compared with an increase of only 4 percent for college graduates and 11 percent for workers with some college education. The unemployment rate for those with only one to five years of schooling rose by almost 50 percent. The level of unemployment is not, however, monotonically related to education either in the 1970s or at present. People receiving no high school training have significantly lower unemployment rates than do high school drop-outs.'3 That pattern at least raises a question about arguments that unemployment is due to a lack of skills on the part of workers. WHAT TYPES OF UNEMPLOYMENT HAVE INCREASED? The discussion so far suggests that the increase in measured unemployment is potentially a serious social problem. Further evidence to that effect can be gleaned from data on changes in the composition of unemployment by reason and duration. As table 5 suggests, most of the increase in unemployment over the last decade is concentrated among 12. For the clearest and most persuasive statement of this view see Robert Hall's comment on Medoff, "U.S. Labor Markets, " BPEA, 1:1983, pp I consider the argument in more detail later. 13. Age effects may be at work here. It is likely that high school drop-outs in the labor force are on average much younger than people receiving less than eight years of schooling. The issue cannot be investigated using published tabulations.
15 Lawrence H. Summers 353 Table 5. Unemployment by Reason and Duration, Various Years, Percent except where otherwise indicated Unem- Reason for unemployment ployment Re- New Year rate Job losers Job leavers entrants entrants 1967a Duration of unemployment Share of Unem- 27 or Mean long-term ployment more duration unem- Year rate weeks weeks weeks weeks (weeks)b ploymentc Od Sources: BLS, Handbook of Labor Statistics (June 1985). Unemployment by reason for unemployment is in table 32, pp Unemployment by duration of unemployment is in table 31, pp Statistics for 1985 are from Employment and Earnings, vol. 33 (January 1986), table 12, p. 166, and table 14, p a. Data on reason for unemployment do not begin until b. Mean duration of interrupted spells. c. Fraction of the year's unemployment due to persons with more than twenty-seven weeks of unemployment as derived from the Work Experience Survey. d. Because 1985 data are unavailable, data from 1984 are used. job losers. The unemployment rate attributable to job loss rose from 1.6 percent in 1967 to 2.4 percent in 1974,2.5 percent in 1978, and 3.6 percent in Unemployment attributable to job leavers has not increased at all since 1974, while unemployment among new entrants to the work force has increased modestly. Noticeable increases in unemployment have also taken place among workers reentering the work force. For reasons spelled out in detail in my earlier paper with Kim Clark, I believe that a substantial part of the reentrant category is composed of workers who have recently lostjobs. 14 If even a portion of the increase in reentrant unemployment is added to the job losers category, it appears clear that 14. Kim B. Clark and Lawrence H. Summers, "Labor Market Dynamics and Unemployment: A Reconsideration," BPEA, 1:1979, pp We show that many reentrants have relatively recent work experience and report durations of unemployment very close to the total time since they last worked. The traditional picture of housewives reentering the labor force after their children have grown up is grossly inconsistent with the facts regarding reentrant unemployment.
16 354 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2:1986 the bulk of the increase in unemployment in recent years is the result of job loss. The data also suggest that a large part of the observed increase in unemployment is due to increases in the duration of unemployment. Of the 1.1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate between 1978 and 1985, 0.5 point, or almost half, is attributable to increases in the number of people reporting themselves as out of work for more than twenty-seven weeks. The incidence of such long-term unemployment has more than doubled since Only a relatively small part of the observed increase in unemployment is due to an increase in the number of people reporting themselves as unemployed for fewer than five weeks. Data on unemployment duration are difficult to interpret because of the high incidence of reporting errors. It appears that almost threequarters of the unemployed population report their duration of unemployment inconsistently from month to month.15 There is also the complication, emphasized by many authors, that almost half of all unemployment spells end in withdrawal from the labor force rather than in employment.'6 Nonetheless, the available information suggests that unemployment is increasingly concentrated among a relatively small group that is unemployed for long stretches of time. An easy way to see this point is to note that doubling the mean duration of incomplete spells of unemployment (shown in table 5) provides an estimate of the mean duration of the completed spell for those currently unemployed. 17 As Clark and I argued in our earlier paper, this concept is far superior to the more commonly studied mean duration of a completed spell for those entering unemployment in assessing the dynamics of unemployment. The expected total duration of unemploy- 15. The consistency of individuals' reported unemployment duration from month to month is examined in James M. Poterba and Lawrence H. Summers, "Response Variation in the CPS: Caveats for the Unemployment Analyst," Monthly Labor Review, vol. 107 (March 1984), pp This finding is probably a consequence of measurement error in the CPS survey. See James M. Poterba and Lawrence H. Summers, "Reporting Errors and Labor Market Dynamics," Econometrica (forthcoming). 17. For discussions of alternative concepts of the duration of unemployment, see Stephen W. Salant, "Search Theory and Duration Data: A Theory of Sorts," Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 91 (February 1977), pp ; George A. Akerlof and Brian G. M. Main, "Unemployment Spells and Unemployment Experience," American Economic Review, vol. 70 (December 1980), pp ; and Clark and Summers, "Labor Market Dynamics."
17 Lawrence H. Summers 355 ment for the unemployed is now thirty-one weeks, compared with twenty-four weeks in 1978, twenty weeks in 1974, and twenty-four weeks in Taking account in some way of the shortening of reported spells of unemploymenthat can be attributed to labor force withdrawal would further increase the estimated duration of joblessness for the currently unemployed population. Additional evidence on the concentration of unemployment among the long-term unemployed is provided by the retrospective Work Experience Survey conducted annually in March as a supplement to the CPS. The March survey, in which respondents are asked about the extent of their unemployment and employment experience in the preceding year, makes it possible to calculate the fraction of total unemployment attributable to people experiencing different amounts of unemployment in the preceding year. In our earlier paper, Clark and I used this data to suggest that a large fraction of unemployment in 1969, 1974, and 1975 was attributable to the relatively small subgroup of the population that experienced more than six months of unemployment in the preceding year.18 Replicating our calculations for subsequent years suggests that the importance of long-term unemployment has increased significantly. While people out of work for twenty-seven or more weeks accounted for 45.2 percent of all unemployment reported in the 1974 Work Experience Survey, they accounted for 46.0 percent of unemployment in 1978 and 54.0 percent of unemployment in 1984, the most recent year for which data are available. Increases in normal unemployment over the past twenty years represent a serious problem. The view that the current high level of unemployment is primarily the result of the increased unemployment of secondary workers is simply false. In fact, the increases in unemployment have been relatively greatest for mature men with dependents. And they have resulted primarily fromjob loss and increases in duration of unemployment. CPS UNEMPLOYMENT AND OTHER LABOR MARKET INDICATORS A number of recent analyses have called attention to the fact that the observed increase in the official unemployment rate has not coincided 18. Clark and Summers, "Labor Market Dynamics," table 4, pp
18 356 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2:1986 with substantial increases in other labor market indicators. '9 It could be that some flaw in the CPS measure of unemployment accounts for the observed increase, though such an argument is difficult to evaluate. Unemployment as reflected in the CPS is more a state of mind than an objective reality. The substantial importance of rotation group bias and the sensitivity of the measured unemployment rate to even small changes in the phrasing or the order of the questions asked suggests the subjective nature of measured unemployment.20 This means that it is difficult to examine whether or not the CPS is correctly measuring unemployment. In an important sense, unemployment is what the CPS says it is. Nonetheless, it is useful to contrast movements in CPS unemployment rates with movements in other variables that are likely to reflect changes in labor market conditions. Table 6 presents estimates of the CPS unemployment rate, the insured unemployment rate, the unemployment rate as inferred from the annual retrospective Work Experience Survey, and the discouraged worker rate.2" A major mystery is the sharp recent decline in the ratio of insured unemployment to total unemployment. The insured unemployment rate-the number of recipients of unemployment benefits divided by the number of jobs covered by unemployment insurance-was about 15 percent lower in 1985 than it was in 1978 and 20 percent lower in 1985 than it was in It was only one-third greater than it was in As Gary Burtless explains, one would expect insured unemployment to be below actual unemployment since many of the unemployed are ineligible for benefits.22 Burtless also suggests that the increasing share of the population covered by unemployment insurance can account for some of the pre-1980 trend decrease in the ratio of 19. See, for example, Martin Neil Baily, "Labor Market Performance, Competition, and Inflation," in Baily, ed., Workers, Jobs, and Inflation, pp ; Hall's comment on Medoff, "U.S. Labor Markets"; Gary Burtless, "Why is Insured Unemployment So Low?," BPEA, 1:1983, pp ; and George A. Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen, "Unemployment through the Filter of Memory," Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 100 (August 1985), pp For a discussion of these points stressing the ambiguity inherent in the distinction between being unemployed and not being in the labor force, see Clark and Summers, "Labor Market Dynamics." 21. It would be desirable to examine the quit and lay-off rates in conjunction with other labor market indicators. Unfortunately, publication of these turnover data was discontinued after As Baily, "Labor Markets," argued, their behavior up until 1981 does not mirror that of the official unemployment rate. 22. Burtless, "Insured Unemployment."
19 Lawrence H. Summers 357 Table 6. Unemployment and Alternative Labor Market Indicators, Percent Work Experience Survey Insured Unemployment unemployment unemployment Discouraged Year rate ratea rate worker rate n.a n.a n.a n.a n.a n.a n.a n.a n.a Source: Author's calculations and BLS, Handbook of Labor Statistics (June 1985). Data for 1984 and 1985 are from Employment and Earnings, vol. 33 (January 1986). n.a. Not available. a. Calculated from published tabulations as the ratio of total weeks of unemployment to labor force time. insured unemploymento total unemployment. But there is no apparent explanation for the divergence of these two measures in recent years. The mystery is deepened by the observation, noted above, that most of the recent increase in unemployment has been due to increases in the job loser category, the category most eligible for unemployment benefits. Burtless considers a number of possible explanations for the recent
20 358 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2:1986 low level of the insured unemployment rate without finding any that are wholly persuasive. It appears that many people who, based on their answers to the CPS questionnaire, appear to be eligible for unemployment insurance are not collecting it, possibly because benefits began to be taxed in 1980 or, more plausibly, because administrative changes have increased the logistical difficulties associated with collecting benefits. It is conceivable that receipt of benefits carries more stigma in the Reagan era than it once did. Perhaps the most plausible explanation, in view of the increasing average duration of unemployment, is that many of the unemployed have exhausted their unemployment insurance eligibility during either their current unemployment spell or a previous one. Although it is not clear what the low insured unemployment rate means, at a minimum it exonerates unemployment insurance as a cause of the high level of unemployment. If a smaller share of the labor force is collecting benefits than used to be the case, unemployment insurance can hardly be blamed for increasing unemployment. The second column of table 6 follows George Akerlof and Janet Yellen in reporting the Work Experience Survey unemployment rate, calculated as the ratio of reported unemployment for the preceding year to reported labor force participation, defined as the sum of time spent employed and unemployed.23 As they note, using data for the period, there has been a tendency for the retrospective unemployment rate to decline relative to the official rate over time. Between 1974 and 1984, the Work Experience Survey unemployment rate increased by 1.6 points; the official rate, 1.9 points. Akerlof and Yellen estimate that the CPS unemployment rate corresponding to any given Work Experience Survey unemployment rate rose by about 0.8 percent per year through 1981, a relationship that has held up over the three additional years for which data have since become available.24 The CPS rate has thus risen by about 12 percent, or My calculation differs slightly from that of Akerlof and Yellen, "Unemployment through the Filter of Memory," because I use reported labor force participation from the Work Experience Survey as the denominator in calculating the Work Experience Survey unemployment rate rather than using labor force data from the CPS as they did. My procedure reduces somewhat the differential between the two series. 24. The precise estimate depends on what adjustment is made for the changes in the CPS instituted in 1967 after the Gordon Commission report. See President's Commission to Appraise Employment and Unemployment Statistics, Measuring Employment and Unemployment (GPO, 1962).