  When a firm hires a worker, adding the new hire to payroll is costly. These
costs reduce the amount of resources that can go to recruiting workers and
amplify how unemployment responds to changes in productivity. Workers also
incur up-front costs upon accepting jobs. Examples include moving expenses and
regulatory fees. I establish that workers' costs lessen the response of
unemployment to productivity changes and do not subtract from resources
available for recruitment. The influence of workers' costs is bounded by
properties of a matching function, which describes how job openings and
unemployment produce hires. Using data on job finding that are adjusted for
workers' transitions between employment and unemployment and for how the Job
Openings and Labor Turnover Survey records hires, I estimate a bound that
ascribes limited influence to workers' costs. The results demonstrate that
costs paid by workers upon accepting jobs affect outcomes in the labor market
(firms threaten workers with paying the up-front costs again if wage
negotiations fail), but their influence on volatility is less important than
firms' costs.
