Journal Article

Occupational Mobility and Lifetime Earnings

Abstract: People?s occupations have a significant amount of information about their wages. However, because people?especially young workers?go through multiple occupations and employment statuses during their working lives, we find that their occupations at a young age do not predict their lifetime earnings well. When educational attainment and gender are considered, we find that across education-gender groups the differences in lifetime earnings are even larger than the differences in average occupational wages: Workers in high-wage education-gender groups (men with college degrees, for example) work more (at the extensive margin) and are more likely to have higher-paying occupations.

JEL Classification: E24; J24; J31; J62;

https://doi.org/10.20955/r.101.231-44

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Part of Series: Review

Publication Date: 2019

Volume: 101

Issue: 3