Research for Unemployment

Over the past four years, the Base Realignment and Closure Commissions have recommended closing half of the Navy's public shipyards in response to the downsizing of the nation's defense establishment. Three of the communities directly affected by shipyard closing - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Charleston, South Carolina, and Vallejo, California (which is the redevelopment authority for Mare Island Naval Shipyard) - were notified in 1993 or before, and each has responded differently. Individual responses and assessments of conversion success to date are subjects of this report. The Long Beach Naval Shipyard is on the recently approved 1995 base closure list and is just beginning the process of developing its reuse strategies. CNA was specifically asked to: examine the prospect of converting a Naval shipyard into a commercial shipyard; and analyze the social and economic challenges these communities might face under such a conversion effort.

Although many studies of military enlistment have been conducted during the last two decades, few have analyzed the reserve component. This research memorandum develops and estimates an econometric model of enlistments for the Naval Reserve. The analysis incorporates factors such as size of recruiting force, Navy veteran population, local unemployment rates, civilian wages, and recruiting goals.

New estimates of the effect of unemployment on enlisted retention are provided in this paper. Unemployment is found to have a positive effect upon the reenlistment rate for seven of the nine rating groups studied, and a positive effect upon both the extension rate and the total retention rate for all nine rating groups. However, the pay elasticities are three to five times as large as the unemployment elasticities, so that decreases in the unemployment rate may be offset by much smaller percentage increases in military pay.

Provides statistics, by firm size catagory, for unemployment insurance in the state of Delaware.