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Monopsony in the U.S. Labor Market

Author

Listed:
  • Chen Yeh

    (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond)

  • Claudia Macaluso

    (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond)

  • Brah J. Hershbein

    (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research)

Abstract
This paper quantifies the extent to which the U.S. manufacturing labor market is characterized by employer market power and how such market power has changed over time. We find that the vast majority of U.S. manufacturing plants operate in a monopsonistic environment and, at least since the early 2000s, the labor market in U.S. manufacturing has become more monopsonistic. To reach this conclusion, we exploit rich administrative data for U.S. manufacturers and estimate plant-level markdowns—the ratio between a plant’s marginal revenue product of labor and its wage. In a competitive labor market, markdowns would be equal to unity. Instead, we find substantial deviations from perfect competition, as markdowns average 1.53. This result implies that a worker employed at the average manufacturing plant earns 65 cents on each dollar generated on the margin. To investigate long-term trends in employer market power, we propose a novel measure for the aggregate markdown that is consistent with aggregate wedges and also incorporates the local nature of labor markets. We find that the aggregate markdown decreased between the late 1970s and the early 2000s, but has been sharply increasing since.

Suggested Citation

  • Chen Yeh & Claudia Macaluso & Brah J. Hershbein, 2022. "Monopsony in the U.S. Labor Market," Upjohn Working Papers 22-364, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:upj:weupjo:22-364
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monopsony; labor market power; markdowns; secular trends;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E2 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment
    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
    • J42 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Monopsony; Segmented Labor Markets

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