Job mobility and wage growth: Evidence from the NLSY79

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 128, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 33-39

  Light, Audrey ^a  

^a OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 28244432850     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: 00981818     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (20)

1. Throughout this article, job mobility refers to a change of employer, and not to an intra-firm change in position, rank, or work assignment.
2. Examples of such models include Kenneth Burdett, "A Theory of Employee Job Search and Quit Rates," American Economic Review, Vol. 68, no. 1, 1978, pp. 212-220;
3. Boyan Jovanovic, "Job Matching and the Theory of Turnover," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 87, No. 5, part 1, 1979, pp. 972-990.
4. For a model of firm-specific human capital, see Gary Becker, "Investment in Human Capital: A Theoretical Analysis," Journal of Politi-cal Economy, Vol. 70, No. 1, pp. 9-49.
5. Agency models include Edward Lazear, "Why is There Mandatory Retirement?" Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 87, No. 6, 1979, pp. 1261-84;
6. Joanne Salop and Steven Salop, "Self-Selection and Turnover in the Labor Market," Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 90, No. 4, 1976, pp. 619-627.
7. The NLSY79 User's Guide is available at http://www.bls.gov/nls/ 79gulde/nls79usg.htm.
8. In contrast, the PSID makes it considerably more difficult to identify unique jobs and to measure tenure on each job. See James N. Brown and Audrey Light, "Interpreting Panel Data on Job Tenure," Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 10, No. 3, 1992, pp. 219-257.
9. See Henry S. Farber, "The Analysis of Interfirm Worker Mobility," Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 12, No. 4, 1994, pp. 554-593;
10. Derek Neal, "The Complexity of Job Mobility Among Young Men," Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 17, No. 2, 1999, pp. 237-261;
11. Anne Beeson Royalty, "Job-to-Job and Job-to-Nonemployment Turnover by Gender and Education Level," Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1998, pp. 392-443;
12. Madeline Zavodny, "Technology and Job Separation Among Young Adults." Economic Inquiry, Vol. 41, No. 2, 2003, pp. 264-278.
13. Studies that control for past job separations include Kristen Keith and Abagail McWilliams, "The Returns to Mobility and Job Search by Gender," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 52, No. 3, 1999, pp. 460-477;
14. Audrey Light and Kathleen McGarry, "Job Change Pat-terns and the Wages of Young Men," Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 80, No. 2, 1998, pp. 276-286;
15. Pamela J. Loprest, "Gender Differences in Wage Growth and Job Mobility," American Economic Review, Vol. 82, No. 2, 1992, pp. 526-532.
16. Studies that focus on the wage-tenure relationship include Bernt Bratsberg and Dek Terrell, "Experience, Tenure, and Wage Growth of Young Black and White Men," The Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 33, No. 3, 1998, pp. 658-682;
17. Daniel Parent, "Industry-Specific Capital and the Wage Profile: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics," Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 18, No. 2, 2000, pp. 306-323;
18. Randall J. Olsen, "Job Switching, Earnings Growth and the Rate of Return to Tenure," Ohio State University working paper, November 2001.
19. For a discussion of the ambiguity in career start dates, see Audrey Light, "Estimating Returns to Schooling: When Does the Career Begin?" Economics of Education Review, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 31-45.
20. Because interviews were conducted annually from 1979 to 1994, and the 8-year observation period ends well before 1996 for most respondents, the majority of successive wage reports are approximately 1 year apart. One-half the 2-year differences is used to avoid discarding wage data for those respondents whose 8-year period extends in the mid-1990s; these are invariably younger respondents who stay in school a relatively long time. For this exercise, the dependent variable is again the average hourly wages divided by the GDP implicit price deflator.