Loprest, Pamela J.
Gender Differences in Wage Growth and Job Mobility
AEA Papers and Proceedings 82,2 (May 1992): 526-532
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Keyword(s): Gender Differences; Income; Job Status; Mobility; Mobility, Job;

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The male-female wage differential increases with workers' time in the labor force. Lower wage growth of older female workers may be explained by lower levels of labor market experience due to time out of the labor force. However, the female-to-male ratio of earnings falls over time even for young full-time workers just entering the labor market. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth show that real wage growth over the first four years after labor-market entry for full-time workers is 35.6 percent for men and only 29.1 percent for women. This paper focuses on the job mobility of young male and female workers to try to explain this differential. In this paper. I use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to try to explain this increasing differential. I focus on the differences between men's and women's patterns of job mobility and wage growth in their first four years of working full-time in the labor market. There is much evidence that job-changing plays an important role in the wage growth of young men. Robert Topel and Michael Ward (1988) find that young men are very mobile with a large percentage of wage growth, 40 percent over the first ten years in the labor market, coming with job changes. This paper explores to what extent differences in job mobility, returns to job mobility, and the characteristics of the jobs men and women hold can account for the differences between men's and women's wage growth.