ABSTRACT
A main focus of the literature on gross job flows (as well as of many of the chapters collected in this volume) is the relation between, on the one hand, gross job creation and destruction rates and, on the other hand, aggregate business fluctuations. Is all this attention justified? In principle yes. Were cyclical fluctuations found to be closely associated with the pace of job turnover, the empirical relevance of many highly aggregative models used in forecasting business cycle developments (let alone the assessment of the scope for stabilisation policies) would be somewhat questioned. Insofar as job turnover is a measure of plant-level heterogeneity, observing a marked cyclical pattern in job turnover would suggest that one cannot abstract from the cross-sectional variation in employment growth as the latter could hide important features (if not determinants) of the cycle.
