Early Career Job Mobility and the Gender Wage Growth Differential

Abstract

At first entry into the labor market, the ratio of female to male earnings is near parity. Over the following years, however, the gender wage gap grows quickly. The early labor market years are an important determinant of lifetime earnings for young men. This period is characterized by high wage growth, with a large portion of the growth coming from high rates of job turnover. Loprest (1992) finds that the same characterization does not apply to young women. During the first four years spent in the labor market, women have 19 percent lower average annual wage growth than men, and this difference can be largely attributed to women's lower returns to mobility. In my thesis, I investigate the effect of job mobility on the gender wage growth differential and how this relationship has changed over time, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) for the 1979 and 1997 cohorts. Given the long-term trend of an increasing female to male earnings ratio and the changing role of women in the labor market, it is plausible that the gender dynamics of job mobility have changed as well. Based on my analysis, this does not seem to be the case. Across both NLSY cohorts, women experience lower returns to mobility compared to men, especially for voluntary job changes. I look at two possible sources for this phenomenon -- the ``tied mover" hypothesis and part-time employment -- but find that neither is able to explain the gender differential in returns to job mobility.