Decomposing Variations in Labor Market Mismatch

This paper shows how changes in labor market mismatch can be attributed to the components unemployment, vacancies and matching efficiency. We find that unemployment is the most important factor and also drives the cyclical fluctuations, while the vacancy contributions are smaller and countercyclical. We differentiate by the source of unemployment and show that flows vis-à-vis employment increase mismatch, while this is not the case for non-employment and apprenticeship / training.