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Slack and Slacker: Job Seekers, Job Vacancies, and Matching Functions in the U.S. Labor Market during the Roaring Twenties and the Great Contraction, 1924–1932

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2016

Woong Lee
Woong Lee*
Affiliation:
Woong Lee is Research Fellow, Department of the Asia-Pacific, Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, Building C, Sejong National Research Complex, 370 Sicheongdaero, Sejong-si, 30147, Korea. E-mail: woonglee@gmail.com, wlee@kiep.go.kr.
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Abstract

I use unique city-month level disaggregated data, from public employment offices, to estimate the matching functions for the 1920s and the early 1930s. The results show that the public labor exchange was slack, a relative deficiency of job vacancies, in the 1920s and it became slacker during the Great Depression. However, the findings show that there was no deterioration of the matching efficiency in the early 1930s. The outcome of a deficiency of labor demand during the 1930s implies that there was a need for effective government policies to implement the new job-creation programs.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 76 , Issue 3 , September 2016 , pp. 840 - 873
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2016 

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Footnotes

I acknowledge the generous comments from Gavin Wright at the All UC Group in Economic History Conference in 2009. I am also indebted to Price Fishback who advised and shared his expertise on the data, and benefitted from the helpful comments and suggestions of the two anonymous referees and Paul Rhode. Finally, I thank my advisor, Dan Bogart, for his generous guidance. All the errors and views in the article are the author's own.

References

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