IBS Speaker Series: Jeronimo Carballo (joint work with James Flynn, Anja Gruber, and Richard Mansfield)

Join in person or via Zoom, email ibs-contact@colorado.edu for the password.
*Light lunch served at 11:45, please RSVP.

Title: Understanding the Great Resignation – Worker Reallocation following the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract: In the last two years, the U.S. labor market has experienced a tumultuous and incomplete recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic: employment converged very slowly to pre-pandemic levels, while employers reported a historic number of unfilled positions. In the meantime, the job quit rate soared as many workers seek to exploit this tight labor market, a phenomenon known as the Great Resignation. This paper investigates several aspects of the Great Resignation: Which kinds of workers switched jobs at an elevated rate? Which kinds of jobs did they quit and which kinds did they take? How much did their earnings rise? How did this reallocation affect firms’ ability to fill remaining vacancies? To answer these questions, we utilize a host of publicly available data to construct a national, disaggregated transitions database that can account for worker movements from and to employment, from and to unemployment or self-employment, and for movements of workers in and out of the labor force within small demographic groups. This work motivates and guides a broader project aimed at providing a comprehensive account of the underlying sources of the excess demand for and reallocation of U.S. workers experienced in 2021 and 2022.

Bio: Jeronimo Carballo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Colorado Boulder where he has been since 2015. His primary research interest is international trade with a special emphasis on firms’ decisions under uncertainty, exploring trade cost using micro data, and the intersection between trade and labor markets. His research has been published in several journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of International Economics and Journal of Development Economics. His recent work has been funded by the National Science Foundation.