Abstract
Fissured employment has grown in prominence in the US labor market since 1980, and now represents around 3.5% of total employment relationships, as of 2017. In an attempt to better understand how fissured employment affects macroeconomic business cycles, this study lays out a framework to analyze how these non-traditional labor relationships affected the speed of economic recovery following the 2001 and 2007-2009 recessions. Economic recovery will be analyzed at both a state and industry level. This study assumes that the composition of state economies has a significant effect on economic recovery. The general hypothesis of this research is that higher levels of fissured employment relationships cause faster economic recovery. Overall, empirical results are rather ambiguous as to the effect of fissured employment on economic recovery at both a state and industry level.