Julia Lane

Job Flows, Worker Flows, and Churning

We utilize a large employer‐level panel dataset to explore the links between gross job flows and gross worker flows. Our findings have relevance for models of job creation and job destruction, and labor reallocation. We find churning flows (the difference between worker and job flows at the level of the employer) to be high, pervasive, and highly persistent within employers, suggesting that they arise as a correlate of an equilibrium personnel policy. We find the dynamic relationship between job and worker flows to be quite complex: lagged job flows raise churning flows, and lagged churning flows reduce employment growth.

Let's make science metrics more scientific

To capture the essence of good science, stakeholders must combine forces to create an open, sound and consistent system for measuring all the activities that make up academic productivity, says Julia Lane.

Measuring the Results of Science Investments

Science agencies and research institutions are building the infrastructure to evaluate results of federal funding of scientific research. Historically, federally funded basic and applied scientific research has promoted scientific knowledge, innovation, economic growth, and social well-being. However, there is increasing pressure to document the results of these research investments in a scientific manner (1, 2) and to quantify how much of the work is linked to innovation (3).

Churning dynamics: an analysis of hires and separations at the employer level

Abstract This paper provides evidence on job flows and worker flows at the level of the employer. We ask whether firms grow by increasing hires, reducing separations, or both, and we develop a graphical approach to address this. We use a new dataset to estimate the relationship between job flows and worker flows at the employer level. We show that most employers are simultaneously hiring and facing separations. We also show that declining firms continue to hire, and growing firms continue to lose workers. The relationship between hires and separations differs between employers, varying with size, average wage and industry.

Integrated Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data for the United States

The development of a database infrastructure that captures the complex interactions among households and businesses at the microeconomic level and characterizes the dynamics of the modern economy is critical for the social sciences. The creation of such an infrastructure has posed a major challenge to national statistical institutes. Since most institutes collect, store, and disseminate data on the engines of economic growth (businesses and households) in twin data silos, proposals to integrate the two face technical, monetary, legal, and policy obstacles that go far beyond the norm of datacollection activities. Recent efforts at the Longitudinal Employer–Household Dynamics (LEHD) Program at the U.S. Census Bureau have finally made this critical data infrastructure achievable and accessible. The potential uses of longitudinal integrated employer–employee data are far-reaching. A partial list includes: the effect of technological and structural change on earnings, employment, and productivity; the analysis of the firmspecific contribution to pay; the effect of firm wage-setting and turnover policies on productivity; the impact of firm policies on different groups of workers (e.g., welfare recipients); the effect of firm expansion, exit, and relocation decisions on neighborhood demographic composition, the analysis of worker commuting patterns and mobility; and a full accounting of the

Assessing the impact of science funding

Quantifying the outcomes of investment in science is not an easy task. Science supporters were rightly excited by the passage of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA, i.e., the stimulus package). Headlines in Science (1) and Nature (2) rejoiced at the new value placed on science as a basis for economic growth and associated job creation. Indeed, federal investment was at least partly based on a belief that the result would be more competitive firms and more, and better, jobs—and soon! (3). That belief was bolstered by advocacy groups: For example, a report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) estimated that an additional

Worker and job flows

20 billion investment in research in the stimulus package would create ∼402,000 American jobs for 1 year.

New Approaches to Confidentiality Protection Synthetic Data, Remote Access and Research Data Centers

Abstract This paper uses a unique matched panel of firms and workers to describe worker and job flows. It finds a great deal of variation in both worker and job flows by sector: it also finds that job flows are not synonymous with worker flows. Contracting firms continue to hire workers; expanding firms have workers who exit. Older and larger firms have systematically lower rates of job creation and destruction, as well as of worker separations.

Hospital Market Structure and the Return to Nursing Education

This paper describes a proposal to combine three approaches that will enable research access to high quality data while preserving confidentiality. These approaches are: developing synthetic microdata which can be accessed at a restricted access site (a virtual Research Data Center), together with access to the “gold standard” analytical data set through a Research Data Center network. It also describes the promise of the development of other datasets – particularly multiple public use files that can be created from the same underlying data that can be targeted at different audiences

Using Worker Flows to Measure Firm Dynamics

Wages and employment patterns of over 5000 nurses are examined for a state where extensive corporate ownership of hospitals magnifies the concentrated nature of the hospital setting. While baccalaureate nurses hold more positions of responsibility, regression analysis shows that the interaction of possessing a baccalaureate degree and hospital employment results in a significantly negative effect on wages. The study suggests that this effect is due to the oligopsonistic hospital structure rather than to lack of recognition by employers of differences between baccalaureate and other nurses.