United States: Is there a link between labour market turnover and productivity gains?
We would normally expect turnover in the labour market (job openings, high levels of hires and separations, high quit rates) to imply significant productivity gains, since high turnover normally means that employees move from less productive jobs to more productive, better-paid jobs. Comparing productivity gains with these data that characterise labour market turnover , we find that there are no significant correlations between the different measures of labour market turnover and productivity gains. Such gains are therefore due to structural causes (level of investment in new technologies, level of R&D spending, etc.) and not to cyclical causes linked to the functioning of the labour market.