During downturns, workers get stuck in low-productivity jobs and wages remain stagnant. I build an heterogenous agent incomplete market model with a full job ladder that accounts for these facts. An adverse financial shock calibrated to the US Great Recession replicates the period’s slow recovery and missing disinflation.
The theory that rich economic diversity of businesses and households both affects and is shaped by economy-wide fluctuations has strong implications for monetary policy. This review places these insights in a Canadian context.
Although the number of job applications has risen, job-finding rates remain relatively unchanged while job-separation rates have significantly declined. Rather than raising the probability of finding a job, we find that a rise in applications raises the probability of finding a good match, as evidenced by the decline in separation rates.
Measuring labour market slack is essential for central banks: without full employment in the economy, inflation will not stay close to target. We propose a comprehensive approach to assessing labour market slack that reflects the complexity and diversity of the labour market.
Digital technologies have helped maintain economic activity while allowing people to remain physically distant throughout the COVID-19 crisis. This note shows that the number of online postings for jobs related to the production of digital technologies in Canada decreased less than the number for other jobs and recovered more quickly after lockdowns were lifted.
We use four decades of Canadian matched employer-employee data to explore how inequality and the dynamics of individual earnings have evolved over time in Canada. We also examine how the earnings growth of individuals is related to the growth of their employers.
We expect potential output growth to be higher than in the October 2020 reassessment. By 2024, growth will be slightly above its average growth from 2010 to 2019. We assess that the Canadian nominal neutral rate continues to lie in the range of 1.75 to 2.75 percent.
How do firms change their employment decisions when tax benefits for low-earning workers are expanded? Some firms increase employment overall, whereas others replace high-earning workers with low-earning workers, according to German linked employer-employee data.
We study the labour market and welfare effects of expanding unemployment insurance benefits and introducing payroll subsidies during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that both policies are complementary and are beneficial to different types of workers. Payroll subsidies preserve the employment of workers in highly productive jobs, while unemployment insurance replaces lost income for workers who experience inevitable job loss.