James Spletzer

The recent rise of the gig economy has raised many new questions about labor markets and the impact of new business models on workers. In Driving the Gig Economy (NBER Working Paper 32766), Katharine G. Abraham, John C. Haltiwanger, Claire Y. Hou, Kristin Sandusky, and James Spletzer examine the...

Using rich administrative tax data, we explore the effects of the introduction of online ridesharing platforms on entry, employment and earnings in the Taxi and Limousine Services industry. Ridesharing dramatically increased the pace of entry of workers into the industry. New entrants were more...

M ost of the growth in earnings inequality in the United States over the last several decades can be explained by employment growt h and changes in earnings differentials in about 10 percent of all industries, at both the top and bottom of the earnings distribution, rather than by rising inequality...

Most of the rise in overall earnings inequality is accounted for by rising between-industry dispersion from ten percent of 4-digit NAICS industries. These thirty industries are clustered especially in high-paying high-tech and low-paying retail sectors. The rise of employment in mega firms is...

Rising earnings inequality in the last few decades is dominated by rising between firm inequality. In turn rising between firm inequality is dominated by rising inter-industry earnings differentials. Over this same period, there has been declining labor market fluidity. The pace of hires and...

We find that most of the rising between firm earnings inequality that dominates the overall increase in inequality in the U.S. is accounted for by industry effects. These industry effects stem from rising inter-industry earnings differentials and not from changing distribution of employment across...

The rise of the gig economy has attracted wide attention from both scholars and the popular media. Much of this attention has been devoted to jobs mediated through various online platforms. While non-traditional work arrangements have been a perennial subject of debate and study, the perception that...

The rise of the gig economy has attracted wide attention from both scholars and the popular media. Much of this attention has been devoted to jobs mediated through various online platforms. While non-traditional work arrangements have been a perennial subject of debate and study, the perception that...

It is well known that the long-term unemployed fare worse in the labor market than the short-term unemployed, but less clear why this is so. One potential explanation is that the long-term unemployed are bad apples who had poorer prospects from the outset of their spells (heterogeneity). Another is...

[There is no] compelling evidence that there have been changes in the structure of the labor market that are capable of explaining the [recent] pattern of persistently high unemployment rates. The recession of 2007 to 2009 caused such high and persistent unemployment that it led many to conclude...

The recession of 2007-09 witnessed high rates of unemployment that have been slow to recede. This has led many to conclude that structural changes have occurred in the labor market and that the economy will not return to the low rates of unemployment that prevailed in the recent past. Is this true?...

Churn, defined as replacing departing workers with new ones as workers move to more productive uses, is an important feature of labor dynamics. The majority of hiring and separation reflects churn rather than hiring for expansion or separation for contraction. Using the JOLTS data, we show that...

As the structure of the American economy has changed over the past few decades, researchers and policy makers have been increasingly concerned with how these changes affect workers. In this book, leading economists examine a variety of important trends in the new economy, including inequality of...

Using a large data set that links individual Current Population Survey (CPS) records to employer-reported administrative data, we document substantial discrepancies in basic measures of employment status that persist even after controlling for known definitional differences between the two data...

This paper exploits a new matched universal and longitudinal employer-employee database at the US Census Bureau to empirically investigate the link between firms' choice of worker mix and the implied relationships between productivity and wages. We particularly focus on the decision making process...