I looked for the OECD study that you mentioned, but I haven't found it yet. In the meantime, I found a similar ILO study: Giuseppe Bertola, Tito Boeri, and Sandrine Cazes, "Employment Protection and Labour Market Adjustment in OECD Countries: Evolving Institutions and Variable Enforcement" (<http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/publ/etp48.htm>, 1999).
Looking at "Table 1. Ranking of Employment Protection Legislation Indicators by 'Strictness'" (based on an OECD Job Study in 1994, available at <http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/publ/etp48.htm#TABLE1>), there is a great deal of difference among OECD countries, and the United States, as expected, ranks at the bottom, with English-speaking nations (New Zealand, Canada, and Australia), clustering near it.
For the purpose of international comparison, "Table 2. Job Turnover and Labour Turnover" (at <http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/publ/etp48.htm#TABLE2> -- cf. "Job turnover = Job creation + Job Destruction. Put another way, job turnover at time t is the sum of all plant-level employment gains and losses that occur between t-1 and t" and " Labour turnover = Hirings + Separations. Put another way, labour turnover at time t equals the number of persons who change place of employment or employment status between t and t-1. It is also the sum of job turnover and flows of workers into and out of existing jobs in establishments or firms") doesn't seem all that helpful (as sampled periods vary greatly across countries in the chart), but the US is once again at an extreme, exhibiting much higher rates of job and labor turnover rates than continental European nations, but that may be in large part because US data in this chart, unlike data from other nations, are based on quarterly estimates that are annualized. The US may be closer to Canada than the chart suggests. To abbreviate the chart, just focusing on these two rates:
Country Annual rates as per cent of total employment
Job turnover Labour turnover Denmark 23.2 57.9 Finland 19.5 77.0 France (e) 7.2 58.0 Germany 16.0 62.0 Italy 22.8 68.1 Netherlands 7.0 22.0 Canada 22.1 92.6 United States 53.6 126.4
See "Table 3. Tenure Length Distribution of Existing Jobs, 1995" (at <http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/publ/etp48.htm#TABLE3>. The average job tenure of US workers is much shorter than that of their European counterpart, with that of non-US English-speaking workers clustering near the US average:
< 1 year > 10 years Average, all jobs Italy 8.5 45.6 11.6 Germany 16.1 35.4 9.7 France 15.0 42.0 10.7 UK 19.6 26.7 7.8 Canada 23.5 N/A. 7.8 US 28.8 N/A. 6.7
In "Table 4. Job Turnover: Average Annual Rates as a Per Cent of Total Employment" (based on "OECD Employment Outlook, 1996 and OECD 1997 for unemployment rates," available at <http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/publ/etp48.htm#TABLE4>), however, the job turnover rates across countries indeed cluster in a smaller range, and Canada and France are shown as having higher job turnover rates than the US:
Canada France Germany Italy UK US
1983-91 1984-91 1983-90 1987-92 1985-91 1984-91 Job turnover 26.3 24.4 16.5 21.0 15.3 23.4
But, here, too, the job turnover pattern in the US differs significantly from those in the other OECD nations in the chart. In the US, most job gains (13.0) come from openings (8.4) rather than expansions (4.6), whereas it is the other way around in all other OECD countries in the chart:
Canada France Germany Italy UK
1983-91 1984-91 1983-90 1987-92 1985-91 Openings 3.2 6.1 2.5 3.8 2.7 Expansions 11.2 6.6 6.5 7.3 6.0
A similar contrast obtains in data about job losses. Of the gross job losses (10.4) in the US, a big majority comes from closures (7.3) rather than contractions (3.1); in the UK, too, more jobs are lost through closures (3.9) than contractions (2.7); but the reverse is true in the other nations in the chart:
Canada France Germany Italy
1983-91 1984-91 1983-90 1987-92 Closures 3.1 5.5 1.9 3.8 Contractions 8.8 6.3 5.6 6.2
Therefore, even at the same job turnover rate, US workers experience much more volatility than European workers do.
If you isolate the US manufacturing sector, where organized labor is stronger in many other sectors, from the total US employment, the US manufacturing sector exhibits a European pattern of gaining more jobs from expansions (6.7) than openings (1.4) and losing more workers to contractions (7.7) than to closures (2.7).
Which pattern is more favorable to organized labor in particular and the working class in general, in terms of fostering class solidarity, is clear. Getting new hires integrated in existing workplaces with experienced workers is better than seeing more jobs in new openings where all workers need to get acquainted with one another from a blank slate; existing workplaces contracting and letting some of their workers go (especially through early retirements) is better than traumatic closures of establishments whose workers, en masse, lose contact with one another. When capitalists complain of rigidity in the European labor market, they are probably talking about the European pattern of job gains and losses, rather than the European job turnover rate. -- Yoshie
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