Search Results
Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 38.
(refine search)
Working Paper
Firms as Learning Environments: Implications for Earnings Dynamics and Job Search
This paper demonstrates that heterogeneity in firms' promotion of human capital accumulation is an important determinant of life-cycle earnings inequality. To arrive at this finding, I develop a life-cycle search model with heterogeneous workers and firms. In the model, a worker's earnings can grow through both human capital accumulation and labor market competition channels. Human capital growth depends on both the worker's ability and the firm's learning environment. I apply the model to administrative micro data from Germany. While bringing the model to the data, I find evidence of ...
Working Paper
Firms as Learning Environments: Implications for Earnings Dynamics and Job Search
This paper demonstrates that heterogeneity in firms’ promotion of human capital accumulation is an important determinant of life-cycle earnings inequality. I use administrative micro data from Germany to show that different establishments offer systematically different earnings growth rates for their workers. This observation suggests that that the increase in inequality over the life cycle reflects not only inherent worker variation, but also differences in the firms that workers happen to match with over their lifetimes. To quantify this channel, I develop a life-cycle search model with ...
Nominal Wage Growth at the Individual Level in 2022
Some workers have seen large changes in their wages over the past year. An analysis looks at who has experienced the most and the least nominal wage growth.
Journal Article
Worker Types, Job Displacement, and Duration Dependence
The composition of the workforce has implications for the earnings consequences of a job loss and patterns in the job-finding rate.
Working Paper
Subjective Earnings Risk
Earnings risk is central to economic analysis. While this risk is essentially subjective, it is typically inferred from administrative data. Following the lead of Dominitz and Manski (1997), we introduce a survey instrument to measure subjective earnings risk. We pay particular attention to the expected impact of job transitions on earnings. A link with administrative data provides multiple credibility checks. It also shows subjective earnings risk to be far lower than its administratively- estimated counterpart. This divergence arises because expected earnings growth is heterogeneous, even ...
Working Paper
Subjective Earnings Risk
We introduce a survey instrument to measure earnings risk allowing for the possibility of quitting or being fired from the current job. We find these transitions to be the key drivers of subjective risk. A link with administrative data provides multiple credibility checks for correspondingly aggregated data. Yet it reveals subjective earning risk to be many times smaller than traditional estimates imply even when conditioning richly on demographics and job history. A life-cycle search model calibrated to match data on job transitions and earnings can replicate the distribution of subjective ...
Working Paper
The Alpha Beta Gamma of the Labor Market
Based on patterns of employment transitions, we identify three different types of workers in the US labor market: α’s β’s and γ’s. Workers of type α make up over half of all workers, are most likely to remain on the same job for more than 2 years and, when they become unemployed, typically find a new job within 1 quarter. Workers of type γ comprise less than one-fifth of workers, have a low probability of staying on the same job for more than 2 years and, when they become unemployed, face a high probability of remaining jobless for more than 1 year. Workers of type β are in ...
Working Paper
Labor Force Exiters around Recessions: Who Are They?
This paper identifies workers who experience a job separation during a recession and tracks their labor force status in the following year using the Current Population Survey. Workers are classified as exiters if they leave the labor force shortly after their job loss and non-exiters if they do not. The pool of exiters is disproportionately female, less-educated, and older. During the pandemic recession, there were even more older workers in the exiters pool, although they were less likely to report being retired compared to in the Great Recession. In addition, statuses were more persistent ...
Working Paper
Subjective Earnings Risk
While earnings risk is essentially subjective, it is typically inferred from administrative data. We introduce a survey to measure subjective earnings risk, paying particular attention to the expected impacts of job transitions on earnings. Linking with administrative data provides multiple credibility checks. Subjective expectations about earnings growth and job transitions are consistent with actual realizations when appropriately aggregated. We also find subjective earnings risk is lower than risk inferred from administrative data because expected earnings growth is heterogeneous, even ...
Worker Types in the U.S. Labor Market
Grouping workers by patterns in employment history can help explain persistent joblessness and the quick recovery in productivity after a recession.