Structural consequences of cyclical change for marginal group employment
In Sweden and many other countries, young people and immigrants are facing increasing difficulties in finding employment. We suggest that the decline in employment prospects for marginal groups to a significant extent can be explained by skill upgrading and over-education. In two recent papers focusing on youth and immigrants, respectively, we find support for these hypotheses. The present paper examines how the long-term evolution of youth male employment is linked to cyclical economic change, and in particular to recessions. We base our empirical analyses on data from 31 OECD countries, 1970 to 2018. A basic hypothesis we aim to test is whether the distribution of cyclical points around the line of long-run evolution of general employment has a vertically asymmetrical pattern with respect to marginal employment, such that the relative employment rate of marginal groups declines more in economic downturns (recessions) than it rises in economic upturns. If this asymmetry occurs systematically (repeatedly) over extended periods of time, cyclical change will have structural effects. We find support for this hypothesis based on our analysis of youth male employment. We suggest that two kinds of mechanism are at work in the interaction between cyclical and structural change. The first mechanism is operating from the structure to the cycle: low-skill jobs become increasingly unviable economically, but only slowly and gradually until a marked loss in general demand triggers significant employment decline tilted toward low-skill jobs. Restructuring of work organizations in the wake of the recession makes the return of low-skill jobs in the recovery less than complete. The second kind of mechanism operates in the other direction, i.e., from the cycle to the structure: the rate of educational expansion typically accelerates in recessions. This will in turn speed up the rate of over-education which tends to have a negative impact on marginal employment. We provide descriptive empirical evidence indicating that both these mechanisms are indeed active. In sum, recessions accelerate upward shifts in the skill structure that in turn depress the labor market prospects of male youth, with both links in the chain being of a lasting rather than temporary kind.