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Do Wages Rise With Job Seniority?

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Author Info
Joseph G. Altonji
Robert A. Shakotko

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Abstract

The extent to which wages rise with the accumulation of seniority(tenure) in a firm after one controls for total labor market experience is a fundamental question about the structure of earnings. A variety of studies have found a large, positive partial effect of tenure on wages. This paper re-examines the evidence using a simple instrumental variables scheme to deal with well known estimation biases which arise from the fact that tenure is likely to be related to unobserved individual and job characteristics affecting the wage. We use the variation of tenure over a given job match as the principal instrumental variable for tenure. The variation intenure over the job, in contrast to variation in tenure across individuals and jobs, is uncorrelated by construction with the fixed individual specific and job match specific components of the error term of the wage equation. Our main findingis that the partial effect of tenure on wages is small, and that general labor market experience and job shopping in the labor market account for most wage growth over a career. The strong cross section relationship between tenure and wages is due primarily to heterogeneity bias.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 1616.

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Date of creation: May 1985
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1616

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Ann P. Bartel & George J. Borjas, 1982. "Wage Growth and Job Turnover: An Empirical Analysis," NBER Working Papers 0285, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Wu, De-Min, 1973. "Alternative Tests of Independence Between Stochastic Regressors and Disturbances," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 733-50, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. repec:fth:prinin:169 is not listed on IDEAS
  4. Guasch, J Luis & Weiss, Andrew, 1982. "An Equilibrium Analysis of Wage-Productivity Gaps," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 49(4), pages 485-97, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. James N. Brown, 1983. "Are Those Paid More Really No More Productive? Measuring the Relative Importance of Tenure Versus On-The-Job Training in Explaining Wage Growth," Working Papers 549, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section.. [Downloadable!]
  6. Duncan, Greg J & Hoffman, Saul, 1979. "On-the-Job Training and Earnings Differences by Race and Sex," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 61(4), pages 594-603, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Hashimoto, Masanori, 1981. "Firm-Specific Human Capital as a Shared Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 475-82, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Gary S. Becker, 1962. "Investment in Human Capital: A Theoretical Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70, pages 9. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Ann P. Bartel, 1980. "Wages, Nonwage Job Characteristics, and Labor Mobility," NBER Working Papers 0552, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Farrell Bloch & Mark S. Kuskin, 1978. "Wage determination in the union and nonunion sectors," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, ILR School, Cornell University, vol. 31(2), pages 183-192, January.
  11. Pencavel, John H, 1972. "Wages, Specific Training, and Labor Turnover in US Manufacturing Industries," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 13(1), pages 53-64, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Hausman, Jerry A. & Taylor, William E., 1981. "Panel data and unobservable individual effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 155-155, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Jovanovic, Boyan, 1979. "Job Matching and the Theory of Turnover," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 972-90, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Hausman, Jerry A & Taylor, William E, 1981. "Panel Data and Unobservable Individual Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(6), pages 1377-98, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. James J. Heckman, 1981. "Heterogeneity and State Dependence," NBER Chapters, in: Studies in Labor Markets, pages 91-140 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
  16. Maddala, G S, 1971. "The Use of Variance Components Models in Pooling Cross Section and Time Series Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(2), pages 341-58, March.
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