Labor in the New Economy

Abstract This chapter discusses job loss and the decline in job security in the United States. It argues that a possible explanation for this scenario is an increase in the rate of job change by workers that is not captured by the Displaced Workers Survey (DWS). While job loss rates are lower in the public sector than in the private sector, and move with the business cycle in the private sector, there has been no secular increase in private-sector job loss rates that could account for the decline in private-sector job tenure. While overall rates of job loss did not increase, it is not the case that rates of job loss for high-tenure workers increased relative to those for lower-tenure workers. Some voluntary job change may reflect the kind of worker displacement that the DWS was meant to capture but is not reported as such by workers.