The Impact of Structural Change on Employment Stability
Louie, Kenneth Kam To
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/70787
Description
Title
The Impact of Structural Change on Employment Stability
Author(s)
Louie, Kenneth Kam To
Issue Date
1987
Department of Study
Economics
Discipline
Economics
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Economics, Labor
Abstract
Many recent studies have concluded that there is a high degree of employment stability in the U.S. But none of these studies has concentrated on possible changes in employment stability over time and the probable causes of such fluctuations in employment stability. The present study attempts to fill this void by addressing, and providing preliminary answers for, two major questions: (1) Has employment stability in the U.S. (both generally and for specific categories of workers) changed significantly over time? (Due to data limitations, the time interval studied is the 18-year period from 1963 to 1981). (2) If so, to what extent is this attributable to structural changes in the economy as opposed to demographic changes in the work force?
It is shown in this study that employment stability in the U.S. economy seems to have declined over time in the two-decade period from 1963 to 1981. This decline in job stability is documented by examining both simple measures of stability (e.g., median job tenure) and more sophisticated measures of stability (e.g., job retention probabilities). No major study has explored this secular trend in detail, and the brief studies which have analyzed it usually attribute the decline in employment stability to demographic transitions such as the large inflow of youths and women into the labor force without paying attention to the possible role played by changes in the structural and institutional characteristics of the U.S. economy.
The major conclusion of this study is that structural and institutional changes experienced by the U.S. economy over time have also played a significant role in causing the reduction in employment stability observed between the early 1960s and the early 1980s. This conclusion is reached through the construction and estimation of a statistical model of the determinants of employment stability. Using the estimated model, this study also attempts to estimate the likely impact on job stability of projected demographic and structural changes into 1995.
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