Monopsony in the US Labor Market

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Yeh, Chen; Macaluso, Claudia; Hershbein, Brad
• 署名单位: Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Richmond; W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20200025
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 2099-2138
• 关键词: WAGE DETERMINATION; PRODUCTIVITY; job; search; prices; POWER; rise; EFFICIENCY; creation; markups

摘要

This paper quantifies employer market power in US manufacturing and how it has changed over time. Using administrative data, we estimate plant-level markdowns-the ratio between a plant's marginal revenue product of labor and its wage. We find most manufacturing plants operate in a monopsonistic environment, with an average markdown of 1.53, implying a worker earning only 65 cents on the marginal dollar generated. To investigate long-term trends for the entire sector, we propose a novel, theoretically grounded measure for the aggregate markdown. We find that it decreased between the late 1970s and the early 2000s, but has been sharply increasing since.