Job Matches and Mobility of High Wage Workers in an International Labor Market

We examine worker-to-firm matching in a high-wage international labor market encompassing nine European countries. Employment matches are ranked along two key dimensions: worker productivity, defined by contributions to physical output, and firm productivity, measured by the ability to generate revenue from that physical output. We find a strong and significant positive rank correlation between these two measures, both within and across countries. This evidence of `positive assortative matching' suggests that labor market frictions do not prevent high-productivity workers from matching with high-productivity firms across Europe. Both workers' initial job placements and their subsequent mobility within countries and across countries reinforce this pattern.