IMF Working Papers

What Matters for Job Finding and Separation in the Long Run? Evidence from Labor Market Dynamics in New Zealand

By Guanyu Zheng, Gulnara Nolan, Christopher Ball, Siddharth Kothari, Yosuke Kido

September 7, 2022

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Guanyu Zheng, Gulnara Nolan, Christopher Ball, Siddharth Kothari, and Yosuke Kido. What Matters for Job Finding and Separation in the Long Run? Evidence from Labor Market Dynamics in New Zealand, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2022) accessed December 25, 2024

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Summary

We use the novel anonymized Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS) microdata to analyze job finding rates and job separation rates in New Zealand. We find that individual characteristics, including age, gender, ethnicity and education have a significant impact on job finding and separation rates, even after controlling for other factors. We use a decomposition approach to analyze how the effects of individual characteristics on job finding and separation rates contribute to heterogeneity in employment outcomes. Overall, we find that higher separation rates of young workers play a disproportionate role in explaining heterogeneity of employment outcomes across age groups, while differences in finding rates are somewhat more important in explaining differences by education level. Both finding and separation rate differences are important in explaining differences across ethnicities. We also find some heterogeneous response of worker groups to business cycle after controlling for other factors. The results underscore the importance of well-targeted labor market support policies.

Keywords: Gross worker flows, Labor market dynamics, Unemployment variability

Publication Details

  • Pages:

    29

  • Volume:

    ---

  • DOI:

    ---

  • Issue:

    ---

  • Series:

    Working Paper No. 2022/172

  • Stock No:

    WPIEA2022172

  • ISBN:

    9798400218910

  • ISSN:

    1018-5941