Why do wages become more rigid during a recession than during a boom?

Table 4 Descriptive statistics for the estimation sample of layoff regression

		Left employer	No change
	All	during yeart	in employer
CPI by Industry	1.002	1.001	1.002
	(0.009)	(0.009)	(0.009)
Output Deflator by Industry	1.001	1.001	1.001
	(0.013)	(0.012)	(0.013)
Age	46.042	41.716	46.247
	(11.630)	(11.703)	(11.588)
Tenure	14.016	6.242	14.385
	(11.941)	(9.090)	(11.935)
Number of Children	1.471	1.411	1.474
	(1.094)	(1.133)	(1.092)
Firm Size	186.358	151.284	188.025
	(203.191)	(179.084)	(204.135)
Male	0.686	0.629	0.689
	(0.464)	(0.484)	(0.463)
Married	0.852	0.731	0.858
	(0.355)	(0.445)	(0.349)
Non-unionized Worker	0.598	0.782	0.589
	(0.490)	(0.414)	(0.492)
Change/Left Employer during Year	0.045	1.000	0.000
	(0.208)	(0.000)	(0.000)
Laid-off	0.003	0.061	0.000
	(0.053)	(0.240)	(0.000)
Junior High School	0.113	0.086	0.114
	(0.316)	(0.282)	(0.318)
High School	0.556	0.594	0.554
	(0.497)	(0.492)	(0.497)
Junior College	0.107	0.127	0.106
	(0.309)	(0.334)	(0.307)
University	0.225	0.193	0.227
	(0.418)	(0.396)	(0.419)
Observations	4342	197	4145

Note: Column 1 contains the descriptive statistics for individuals who were working as of January in year t. Those represented in Column 1 are divided into two groups: 1) those who left/changed employers during year t (Column 2) and 2) those who continued with the same employer (Column 3). “Laid off” is a dummy variable with a value of 1 if the individual was laid off during year t. CPI is the industry-level consumer price index during January of each year. The CPI for January 2005 was fixed at 100 for each industry. Since the gross-output deflator is not available on the monthly level, the annual gross-output deflator by industry is used in the analyses.