How labor market institutions affect job creation and productivity growth Updated

Restructuring—Gross job and worker flows

The turnover of firms and jobs is a common feature of modern economies. In the US, over the four decades 1977–2016, for example, new jobs averaged 16.4% of total jobs (Illustration), a third of them in new firms. Over the same period 14.5% of jobs were lost annually through closures and contractions, for an annual net job growth of 1.9%. This 1.9% net gain is associated with a gross job reallocation rate of 30.9% (16.4% + 14.5%) and thus with an excess job reallocation rate—the amount of job-churning beyond the minimum required to accommodate the net employment change—of 29.0%.

Extensive churning is pervasive in all OECD economies. The average within-industry job reallocation rate in the OECD was 22% over 1997–2004 (Figure 1) [1]. An astonishing 80% or more of the reallocation of workers in developed countries takes place within narrowly defined sectors [2]. This reallocation has two main drivers: adjustment among firms with different technologies, and experimentation with improved products, management, and other production systems. Excess job reallocation rates are higher for newer plants because of greater uncertainty, experimentation, and variability in the quality of goods produced.

There are also large differences across countries in the extent of churning. Churning is roughly two-thirds higher in high-end than in low-end economies. Worker flows are an estimated 1.5–2.5 times greater in the US than in Europe [3].

The key importance of high-growth firms

Capitalism entails a process of creative destruction. New ideas continuously challenge old structures, giving rise to structural transformation as successful innovations and new products, firms, and industries arise and obsolete ones decline and vanish. Empirical studies point to high-growth firms (sometimes known as “gazelles”) as the main drivers of this process. In the US, an estimated 1% of firms create 40% of all new jobs—and 5% create almost 70% of new jobs. Similar patterns are found in developing countries, where less than 10% of firms account for more than 50% of new jobs [4]. A review of the studies of firm growth reveals some common findings [5]:

• High-growth firms are crucial to net job growth, generating a large share of all net jobs. This is particularly pronounced in recessions, when high-growth firms continue to grow while other firms decline.

• Small firms are overrepresented among high-growth firms, but high-growth firms come in all sizes. A small subgroup of large high-growth firms are major job creators.

• High-growth firms are younger on average.

• Young and small high-growth firms grow organically (not through mergers and acquisitions) and make a larger contribution to net employment growth than do larger and older high-growth firms.

• High-growth firms are present in all industries, though they are slightly overrepresented in service industries.

Young firms that survive have higher productivity and grow more rapidly than more mature firms [6], suggesting an “up or out” dynamic. Firms have higher productivity and grow more rapidly than incumbents or they fail.

The evidence suggests that high-growth firms, especially those that grow rapidly when young and small, are instrumental to economic growth. A 2007 study judges that half of aggregate productivity growth results from the reallocation of resources from low- to high-productivity firms within an industry and that roughly half of that emanates from startups and closures [2].

Modern societies are rich webs of formal and informal institutions that differ greatly and that shape the incentives of economic actors and the functioning of markets. This article looks at the effect of the organization of labor markets only, although many other institutions also affect structural transformation.

Effects of labor market regulations on productivity

Most OECD countries have reformed and eased their systems of employment protection in recent decades. Nevertheless, large differences remain in the strictness of employment protection, with Canada, the UK, and the US at the looser end and the Mediterranean countries, Mexico, and Turkey at the stricter end [2], [4]. Most of the regulatory easing has affected temporary employment contracts.

There is considerable evidence to support the claim that, in general, when labor markets are less regulated, inputs flow more readily to high-productivity firms, enabling them to grow in line with their inherent potential. Stringent hiring and firing regulations, which curb job flows most to industries and firms that require frequent labor adjustments, tend to affect new firms and failing firms more than incumbent firms.

The effect of regulations governing employee dismissals in OECD countries on productivity has been examined using aggregate cross-country data on the stringency of employment protection rules and industry-level data on productivity over the period 1982–2003 [7]. Accordingly, dismissal regulations have a depressing impact on productivity growth in the industries where layoff restrictions are more likely to be binding.

Distortions at the producer level, such as high regulation-induced costs for shedding labor, weaken the relationship between productivity and firm size within an industry, according to a study based on harmonized firm-level data for the US and seven European countries [8]. The relationship between productivity and firm size is much stronger in the US than in European countries with more stringent labor market regulations. Thus, in both cases the relationship between productivity and firm growth is stronger where dismissal regulations, or other labor market regulations, are more stringent [7], [8].

The latter study also found that high-risk, innovative sectors are smaller in countries with strict employment protection legislation, helping explain the slowdown in productivity in Europe compared with the US since the mid-1990s [8]. Other studies have found that US firms introduce more productivity-enhancing information technology than their European competitors, largely because of the more efficient management practices that evolve in the more deregulated US labor market. Similarly, studies exploiting differences in the timing and adoption of stricter job security mandates in US states have found a negative effect on firm entry rates, job flows, and total factor productivity growth.

In a flexible labor market, the marginal product of labor and the average wage in an industry should tend toward equality across firms. Taking advantage of a legislative change in Chile that raised firing costs, a study measured the gap between the marginal product of labor and the average wage in an industry before and after the reform. The gap increased after the legislation, which suggests that the legislation reduced allocative efficiency [9]. Taking advantage of a Swedish legislative change in 2001 that loosened employment protection requirements for small firms, a study found that the reform increased labor productivity by up to 3% [10].

Studies have suggested that strict product and labor market regulations reduce allocative efficiency as well as lower aggregate multi-factor productivity. Moreover, the positive effect of active labor market policies on multi-factor productivity exists only in the presence of low employment protection.

Other research has revealed a strong quantitative effect of strict employment protection legislation on the rate of reallocation. By relaxing employment protection rules, countries with the strictest legislation could increase their reallocation rate by an estimated 50% in the most dynamic sectors—those that benefit most from flexibility. The effect appears to be particularly strong on the entry-exit margin, which is, arguably, especially important for creative destruction.

Labor market institutions and high-impact entrepreneurship

How should labor markets be regulated and organized so that the economy can benefit most from the dynamic process of creative destruction? Three areas seem to be particularly important for promoting high-impact entrepreneurship and high-growth firms: (i) labor market regulations, especially job security mandates; (ii) wage-setting institutions; and (iii) social insurance systems, including health insurance.

Synthesizing the effects of labor market institutions

The need for experimentation to find more efficient combinations of factors of production is likely to be large in new firms and industries, especially in potential high-growth firms. Thus, strictly regulated job security, wage setting, and social insurance systems influence incentives for potential and existing high-growth firms by affecting their freedom of contracting and limiting the possible combinations of factors of production.

The most important channel through which stringent labor market institutions affect high-growth firms and high-impact entrepreneurship is by narrowing the supply of skilled workers to expanding and restructuring firms. A dynamic economy requires free flows of large numbers of workers. When the opportunity cost of leaving a tenured position rises for employees and the fixed cost of hiring rises for employers because hiring decisions are costly to reverse, it is harder to recruit workers with the right skills and firms may be hesitant to expand beyond a certain size. In addition, a great deal of entrepreneurial effort may be expended on evasive rather than on directly productive activities.

If temporary contracts are used systematically to circumvent labor market regulations tied to permanent employment, businesses that depend on high-skill labor and on-the-job learning are disadvantaged. Legal and institutional hurdles that prevent firms from laying off workers who underperform discourage potential high-growth firms from expanding. The opportunity cost of becoming self-employed or starting a new business depends on how labor markets are regulated and how regulations interact with the social insurance system. When social security benefits are closely tied to tenured positions, the opportunity cost of leaving is high.

Austria reduced the costs of labor mobility for both employers and employees through reforms in 2003 that converted uncertain firing/resigning costs into a system of individual savings accounts, funded by an employer payroll tax. For employers, these accounts provide certainty at the time of hiring about the cost of any future dismissal. For workers, these accounts reduce the costs associated with leaving a firm because they do not lose their entitlement to severance pay.

Some degree of job protection is valuable, since it encourages worker commitment and incentives to invest in firm-specific human capital. Policymakers need to know where to draw the line between protections that provide job stability and those that discourage high-growth firms.