Carl Singleton

Long-Term Unemployment and the Great Recession: Evidence from UK Stocks and Flows

Long‐term unemployment more than doubled during the United Kingdoms Great Recession. Only a small fraction of this persistent increase can be accounted for by the changing composition of unemployment across personal and work history characteristics. Through extending a well‐known stocks‐flows decomposition of labour market fluctuations, the cyclical behaviour of participation flows can account for over two‐thirds of the high level of long‐term unemployment following the financial crisis, especially the procyclical flow from unemployment to inactivity. The pattern of these flows and their changing composition suggest a general shift in the labour force attachment of the unemployed during the downturn.

Gender and the Business Cycle: A Stocks and Flows Analysis of US and UK Labour Market States

In this paper we combine an analysis of all labour market stocks and flows to assess gender gaps during periods of economic recessions and booms in oth the US and the UK. Starting from an improved understanding of the relationship between gender and the business cycle, we analyse three important and related gender issues: how the fluidity of the labour market explains the way gender gaps in population rates behave during economic cycles, whether the well-known stock-flow fallacy in the importance of cyclical differences in participation extends to gender patterns, and the potential presence of the added worker effect at the aggregate level during the latest Great Recession. We find that, for the UK in particular, flows reveal more prevalent gender differences in participation over the cycle than an analysis of stocks would imply. This is consistent with a female specific added worker effect in the UK, which is not present in the US.

Who works for whom and the UK gender pay gap

This study reports novel facts about the UK gender pay gap. We use a large, longitudinal, representative and employer employee linked dataset for the years 2002-16. Men’s average log hourly wage was 22 points higher than women’s in this period. We ask how much of this gap is accounted for by the differences in whom men and women worked for; how much is explained by the relative wage premiums that firms paid their employees, after adjusting for the influence of other factors, such as occupations and tenure? The answer is less than 1 percentage point, or about one eighteenth of the adjusted hourly gender pay gap. We also find that the allocation of men and women to occupations was as unimportant as how workers were allocated to firms. These results show that in the United Kingdom what happens within firms and occupations is far more important than what jobs men and women have. Therefore, attention should focus on why men and women within UK firms tend to receive different rates of pay.

Segregation and Gender Gaps in the United Kingdom's Great Recession and Recovery

ABSTRACT This article assesses the role of segregation in explaining gender employment gaps through the United Kingdom’s Great Recession and its subsequent period of recovery and fiscal austerity. The analysis reaffirms that gender employment gaps in the UK respond to the business cycle, and it evaluates to what extent these short-term changes in the employment gap can be explained by the industry sectors and occupations where women and men work. A counterfactual analysis accounts for the specific role of combined gender segregation across industry sectors and occupations that existed at the onset of the Great Recession. The results contradict the existing narrative that men’s employment was more harshly affected than women’s employment; segregation accounts for over two and a half times the actual fall in the gender gap between 2007 and 2011.

Recent Changes in British Wage Inequality: Evidence from Firms and Occupations

Using a linked employer-employee dataset, we present new evidence on the role of firms in British wage inequality trends over the past two decades. The extent of differences between firms in the average wages they paid did not drive these trends. Between 1996 and 2005, greater wage variance within firms accounted for eighty-six percent of the total increase in wage variance among British employees. In the following decade, wage inequality between firms continued to increase, whereas overall wage dispersion fell. These British data contain detailed descriptions of employee occupations. Approximately all of the contribution to inequality dynamics from estimated firm-specific factors, throughout the employee wage distribution, disappears after we account for the changing occupational content of wages. The modestly increasing trend in between-firm wage inequality can be explained by a combination of changes to between-occupation inequality and the occupational composition of firms and employment. These results are robust to using weekly, hourly or annual measures of pay.

Segregation and Gender Gaps through the UK's Great Recession

This article assesses the role of segregation in explaining gender employment gaps through the United Kingdom’s Great Recession and its subsequent period of recovery and fiscal austerity. The analysis reaffirms that gender employment gaps in the UK respond to the business cycle, and it evaluates to what extent these short-term changes in the employment gap can be explained by the industry sectors and occupations where women and men work. A counterfactual analysis accounts for the specific role of combined gender segregation across industry sectors and occupations that existed at the onset of the Great Recession. The results contradict the existing narrative that men’s employment was more harshly affected than women’s employment; segregation accounts for over two and a half times the actual fall in the gender gap between 2007 and 2011.