Employers with a more coordinated work process are more productive, pay higher wages, and experience lower worker turnover, but suffer more severe negative consequences from unexpected worker absences and adopt various strategies to mitigate such risk.

We document a robust set of facts on spatial differences in unemployment, vacancies, and job filling, finding, and separation rates, and develop a theory of the geography of labor market dynamics.

The introduction of recall options provides a novel mechanism that reconciles the puzzle of a positive comovement between separation and job finding rate over the life cycle.