What's Up with U.S. Wage Growth and Job Mobility? PDF Download

Author: Mr.Stephan Danninger
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1498335233
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Book Description
Since the global financial crisis, US wage growth has been sluggish. Drawing on individual earnings data from the 2000–15 Current Population Survey, I find that the drawn-out cyclical labor market repair—likely owing to low entry wages of new workers—slowed down real wage growth. There are, however, also signs of structural changes in the labor market affecting wages: for full-time, full-employed workers, the Wage-Phillips curve—the empirical relationship between wage growth and the unemployment rate—has become horizontal after 2008. Similarly, job-turnover rates have continued to decline. Job-to-job transitions—associated with higher wage growth—have slowed across all skill and age groups and beyond what local labor market conditions would imply. This raises concerns about the allocative ability of the labor market to adjust to changing economic conditions.

Author: Fredrik Andersson
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 9780871540560
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
For over a decade, policy makers have emphasized work as the best means to escape poverty. However, millions of working Americans still fall below the poverty line. Though many of these "working poor" remain mired in poverty for long periods, some eventually climb their way up the earnings ladder. These success stories show that the low wage labor market is not necessarily a dead end, but little research to date has focused on how these upwardly mobile workers get ahead. In Moving Up or Moving On, Fredrik Andersson, Harry Holzer, and Julia Lane examine the characteristics of both employees and employers that lead to positive outcomes for workers. Using new Census data, Moving Up or Moving On follows a group of low earners over a nine-year period to analyze the behaviors and characteristics of individuals and employers that lead workers to successful career outcomes. The authors find that, in general, workers who "moved on" to different employers fared better than those who tried to "move up" within the same firm. While changing employers meant losing valuable job tenure and spending more time out of work than those who stayed put, workers who left their jobs in search of better opportunity elsewhere ended up with significantly higher earnings in the long term—in large part because they were able to find employers that paid better wages and offered more possibilities for promotion. Yet moving on to better jobs is difficult for many of the working poor because they lack access to good-paying firms. Andersson, Holzer, and Lane demonstrate that low-wage workers tend to live far from good paying employers, making an improved transportation infrastructure a vital component of any public policy to improve job prospects for the poor. Labor market intermediaries can also help improve access to good employers. The authors find that one such intermediary, temporary help agencies, improved long-term outcomes for low-wage earners by giving them exposure to better-paying firms and therefore the opportunity to obtain better jobs. Taken together, these findings suggest that public policy can best serve the working poor by expanding their access to good employers, assisting them with job training and placement, and helping them to prepare for careers that combine both mobility and job retention strategies. Moving Up or Moving On offers a compelling argument about how low-wage workers can achieve upward mobility, and how public policy can facilitate the process. Clearly written and based on an abundance of new data, this book provides concrete, practical answers to the large questions surrounding the low-wage labor market.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Labor mobility
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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Author: Amanda Jeanette Huffman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Labor economics
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description
Recent academic studies reveal a pronounced trend of increasing income inequality in the United States. For those policymakers concerned with increasing income inequality, wage inequality is a logical policy focus. Wage inequality analyses often focus on demographic characteristics or education; however, a more subtle consideration is job mobility, i.e., the movement of an individual from job to job throughout his career. To the extent that particular job mobility patterns are associated with higher wages, unequal opportunity for workers either to make job changes or to remain in their current jobs can contribute to wage inequality in general. In this study, I focus on the relationship between job mobility and wages in order to understand which job mobility levels are associated with the highest wages for workers at different stages of their careers. Existing academic literature suggests that job mobility is associated with positive wage returns for workers early in their careers, but that the effect diminishes as workers gain experience and positive wage returns to job tenure grow stronger. These findings indicate that the relationships between job mobility, tenure, and wages may depend upon experience. Specifically, I hypothesize that high voluntary job mobility is associated with positive wage returns for low experience workers, while high tenure is associated with positive wage gains for high experience workers. To explore these relationships, I run several regression models that control for person and year fixed effects and a variety of time-varying control variables. I find evidence of positive wage returns associated with high voluntary job mobility, which appear to diminish as workers gain experience. I also find that high tenure is positively associated with higher wages for both low and high experience workers, not just for those workers with high work experience. In terms of policy implications, these findings broadly indicate that some work patterns could result in higher average wages than others, and that a diverse portfolio of labor policies may, therefore, stand to benefit workers who are just beginning their careers, whereas policies that foster increased tenure may create the greatest opportunity for wage growth among workers later in their careers.

Author: Jeffrey Zornitsky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Labor mobility
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Author: Miri Endeweld
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Book Description
This study examines the relationship between job mobility (mobility between employers), and wage growth. This relationship is examined in the short term (year-to-year) as well as in the medium-long term (after five years). Findings are presented for three sub-periods of equal length within the overall period, referring to a decade and a half between 1990 and 2005, with the aim of learning about the persistence and stability of this relationship throughout demographically, economically and socially distinct periods. The data used in this study come from the administrative data of the Tax Authorities, combined with additional demographic and economic data from other sources. According to the data, job stability noticeably diminished between the first and second half of the 1990s, and remained at a similar level afterwards.In the short term, the results show that job mobility -- even when voluntary -- has a negative effect on wage growth in each of the three studied periods, regardless of market and social conditions in these periods. Nevertheless, from a cumulative perspective over a period of five years, involuntary job mobility appears to have a negative effect on wage levels in the long term as well, while the findings regarding voluntary mobility are inconclusive but may be positive. The long-term moderate increase in wages related to job mobility may be explained by the hypothesis that in the current labor market, employees regard transitions between employers as a form of investment that carries certain risks but may be fruitful in the long term, despite its short-term costs -- similar to what the human capital theory suggests regarding the acquisition of education or any other professional training. The findings also show that the effect of job mobility on wage growth in the long term is not resistant to periodical conditions and changes between the different periodsConsidering the transition costs of job mobility, which are not taken into account in this study, job stability seems to be related, for the most part, to better wage growth.

Author: Annette Bernhardt
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610440498
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The promise of upward mobility—the notion that everyone has the chance to get ahead—is one of this country's most cherished ideals, a hallmark of the American Dream. But in today's volatile labor market, the tradition of upward mobility for all may be a thing of the past. In a competitive world of deregulated markets and demanding shareholders, many firms that once offered the opportunity for advancement to workers have remade themselves as leaner enterprises with more flexible work forces. Divergent Paths examines the prospects for upward mobility of workers in this changed economic landscape. Based on an innovative comparison of the fortunes of two generations of young, white men over the course of their careers, Divergent Paths documents the divide between the upwardly mobile and the growing numbers of workers caught in the low-wage trap. The first generation entered the labor market in the late 1960s, a time of prosperity and stability in the U.S. labor market, while the second generation started work in the early 1980s, just as the new labor market was being born amid recession, deregulation, and the weakening of organized labor. Tracking both sets of workers over time, the authors show that the new labor market is more volatile and less forgiving than the labor market of the 1960s and 1970s. Jobs are less stable, and the penalties for failing to find a steady employer are more severe for most workers. At the top of the job pyramid, the new nomads—highly credentialed, well-connected workers—regard each short-term project as a springboard to a better-paying position, while at the bottom, a growing number of retail workers, data entry clerks, and telemarketers, are consigned to a succession of low-paying, dead-end jobs. While many commentators dismiss public anxieties about job insecurity as overblown, Divergent Paths carefully documents hidden trends in today's job market which confirm many of the public's fears. Despite the celebrated job market of recent years, the authors show that the old labor market of the 1960s and 1970s propelled more workers up the earnings ladder than does today's labor market. Divergent Paths concludes with a discussion of policy strategies, such as regional partnerships linking corporate, union, government, and community resources, which may help repair the career paths that once made upward mobility a realistic ambition for all American workers.

Author: Maude Toussaint-Comeau
Publisher: W.E. Upjohn Institute
ISBN: 0880993529
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
The chapters in this book aim at offering a fresh review of the economic circumstances of disadvantaged segments of our Population, as well as providing a provocative but nuancedassessment of the effectiveness of various policies and practices geared to redress a number of issues affecting them. Examples of programs discussed include housing allowances that addressthe spatial mismatch between poor inner-city neighborhoods and areas with job growth, education retention programs and financial aid for older low-income students, employment andtraining programs for former welfare recipients, and labor market reentry programs for the hard-to-employ/ex-offenders in distressed communities. This diversity of programs reflects thevariety of challenges and varying issues that vulnerable populations and communities confront; it also reflects the many creative ways of approaching these problems.

Author: John D. Kasarda
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400922019
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
John D. Kasarda By all accounts, the United States has led the world in job creation. During the past 20 years, its economy added nearly 40 million jobs while the combined European Economic Community added none. Since 1983 alone, the U. S. gener ated more than 15 million jobs and its unemployment rate dropped from 7. 5 percent to approximately 5 percent while the unemployment rate in much of western Europe climbed to double digits. Even Japan's job creation record pales in comparison to the United States'. with its annual employment growth rate less than half that of the United States over the past 15 years (0. 8 percent vs. 2 percent. ) Yet, as the U. S. economy has been churning out millions of jobs annually, con flicting views and heated debates have emerged regarding the quality of these new jobs and its implications for standards of living and U. S. economic competi tiveness. Many argue that the "great American job machine" is a "mirage" or "grand illusion. " Rather than adding productive, secure, well-paying jobs, most new employment, critics contend, consists of poverty level, dead-end, service sector jobs that contribute little or nothing to the nation's productivity and inter national competitiveness. Much of the blame is placed on Reagan-Bush policies that critics say undermine labor unions, encourage wasteful corporate restructur ing, foster exploitative labor practices, and reduce fiscal support for education and needed social services.

Author: Lawrence Mishel
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801466237
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
Since 1988, The State of Working America has provided a comprehensive answer to a question newly in vogue in this age of Occupy Wall Street: To what extent has overall economic growth translated into rising living standards for the vast majority of American workers and their families? In the 12th edition, Lawrence Mishel, Josh Bivens, Elise Gould, and Heidi Shierholz analyze a trove of data on income, jobs, mobility, poverty, wages, and wealth to demonstrate that rising economic inequality over the past three decades has decoupled overall economic growth from growth in the living standards of the vast majority. The new edition of The State of Working America also expands on this analysis of American living standards, most notably by placing the Great Recession in historical context. The severe economic downturn that began in December 2007 came on the heels of a historically weak recovery following the 2001 recession, a recovery that saw many measures of living standards stagnate. The authors view the past decade as "lost" in terms of living standards growth, and warn that millions of American households face another decade of lost opportunity. Especially troubling, the authors stress, is that while overall economic performance in the decades before the Great Recession was more than sufficient to broadly raise living standards, broad-based growth was blocked by rising inequality driven largely by policy choices. A determinedly data-driven narrative, The State of Working America remains the most comprehensive resource about the economic experience of working Americans.