Labor market behavior in Washington: A cointegration approach

Abstract

This study found a long run equilibrium relationship among population, labor force participation rate and employment, in which population is positively related to employment and negatively related to labor force participation rate. We proved that employment growth from new business investment causes increase in population in the state of Washington in spite of its beautiful environment and amenities. The causality does not operate in reverse way. We decomposed the time series into stationary components and non-stationary components and interpreted each component on the basis of historical economic condition of Washington. The response of the labor force participation rate to an impulse in employment supports Bartik's (1993) and Yeo and Holland's (2004) findings. Obviously the result is the opposite of Blanchard and Katz's (1992) finding that the long-run effect of job growth on the labor force participation rate is negligible. With regard to the party who benefits from job growth, we suspect that most of new jobs are captured by in-migrants because the pattern of the stationary component of employment and net migration is quite similar and the impulse response of population is significantly higher than that of employment.