Private Equity, Jobs, and Productivity

Steven J. Davis; John  Haltiwanger; Kyle  Handley; Ron  Jarmin; Josh   Lerner; Javier  Miranda

Article | American Economic Review | December 2014

Private Equity, Jobs, and Productivity

by Steven J. Davis, John Haltiwanger, Kyle Handley, Ron Jarmin, Josh Lerner and Javier Miranda

Abstract

Private equity critics claim that leveraged buyouts bring huge job losses. To investigate this claim, we construct and analyze a new dataset that covers U.S. private equity transactions from 1980 to 2005. We track 3,200 target firms and their 150,000 establishments before and after acquisition, comparing outcomes to controls similar in terms of industry, size, age, and prior growth. Relative to controls, employment at target establishments declines 3% over two years post buyout and 6% over five years. The job losses are concentrated among public-to-private buyouts and transactions involving firms in the service and retail sectors. But target firms also create more new jobs at new establishments, and they acquire and divest establishments more rapidly. When we consider these additional adjustment margins, net relative job losses at target firms are less than 1% of initial employment. In contrast, the sum of gross job creation and destruction at target firms exceeds that of controls by 13% of employment over two years. In short, private equity buyouts catalyze the creative destruction process in the labor market, with only a modest net impact on employment. The creative destruction response mainly involves a more rapid reallocation of jobs across establishments within target firms.

Keywords: Private Equity; Leveraged Buyouts; Performance Productivity; Jobs and Positions; United States;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Davis, Steven J., John Haltiwanger, Kyle Handley, Ron Jarmin, Josh Lerner, and Javier Miranda. "Private Equity, Jobs, and Productivity." American Economic Review 104, no. 12 (December 2014): 3956–3990. (Earlier versions distributed as National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 17399 and Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 12-033.) (Originally called "Private Equity and Employment.")

We examine thousands of U.S. private equity (PE) buyouts from 1980 to 2013, a period that saw huge swings in credit market tightness and GDP growth. Our results show striking, systematic differences in the real-side effects of PE buyouts, depending on buyout type and external conditions. Employment at target firms shrinks 13% over two years in buyouts of publicly listed firms but expands 13% in buyouts of privately held firms, both relative to contemporaneous outcomes at control firms. Labor productivity rises 8% at targets over two years post buyout (again, relative to controls), with large gains for both public-to-private and private-to-private buyouts. Target productivity gains are larger yet for deals executed amidst tight credit conditions. A post-buyout widening of credit spreads or slowdown in GDP growth lowers employment growth at targets and sharply curtails productivity gains in public-to-private and divisional buyouts. Average earnings per worker fall by 1.7% at target firms after buyouts, largely erasing a pre-buyout wage premium relative to controls. Wage effects are also heterogeneous. In these and other respects, the economic effects of private equity vary greatly by buyout type and with external conditions.

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