Job Instability and Wages for Young Adult Men

Abstract

Debate continues over whether job instability is rising in the United States, with data and measurement complicating the search for definitive answers. In this paper we compare two cohorts of young white men from the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS), construct a rigorous measure of job change, and confirm earlier findings of a significant increase in job instability in recent years. Further validation of this increase is found when we benchmark the NLS against the other main datasets in the field and conduct a thorough attrition analysis. Extending the analysis to wages, we find that the wage returns to job changing have both declined and become more unequal for young men, mirroring the trends in their long-term wage growth, and in the overall cross-sectional trends in earnings.