Do businesses benefit from labor hoarding
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 14869695 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nadia Greenhalgh-Stanley, Nadia Greenhalgh‐Stanley (Kent State University, corresponding author), Shawn Rohlin (0000-0002-6956-1012, Kent State University), Amanda Weinstein (0000-0001-8536-1128, Hudson Institute) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 66 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 1371-1393 |
| Publication date | 2026-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Small Business Economics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0921-898X • E-ISSN: 1573-0913 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11187-025-01116-0 |
| OpenAlex | W4415988007 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 48 |
This paper examines whether firms that retained more employees than predicted during the Great Recession, often termed “labor hoarding,” experienced benefits over 7 years. Using establishment-level data from the Infogroup Historical Business Database, we estimate labor hoarding and assess its impact on firm survival, employment, and sales in the recovery period. We find that labor hoarding firms were significantly more likely to survive, with the effect strongest for women-owned and women-led businesses. However, these firms grew more slowly in both employment and sales than non-hoarding counterparts, who needed to rehire post-recession. Our results suggest that retaining workers acts less as an added cost and more as a strategy of “workforce preservation,” providing stability at the expense of rapid post-recession growth. These findings highlight that policies supporting workforce retention, such as the Paycheck Protection Program, may improve business survival and economic resilience, especially for women-led firms
Entrepreneurship · Hoarding (animal behavior · Job creation · Self-employment · Small business · Workforce · Employment and Welfare Studies · Firm Innovation and Growth · Labor market dynamics and wage inequality
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| Highly cited | No |
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