Churning dynamics: an analysis of hires and separations at the employer level

This paper provides evidence on job flows and worker flows at the level of the employer. We ask whether firms grow by increasing hires, reducing separ ations, or both, and we develop a graphical approach to address this. We us e a new dataset to estimate the relationship between job flows and worker f lows at the employer level. We show that most employers are simultaneously hiring and facing separations. We also show that declining firms continue t o hire, and growing firms continue to lose workers. The relationship betwee n hires and separations differs between employers, varying with size, avera ge wage and industry. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. J EL classification: J60; J63.