Rising Occupational and Industry Mobility in the United States: 1968-1993

Abstract

We document and analyze the high level and the substantial increase in worker mobility in the United States over the 1968-1997 period at various levels of occupational and industry aggregation. This is important in light of the recent findings in the literature that human capital of workers is largely occupation- or industry-specific. To control for measurement error in occupation and industry coding, we develop a method that utilizes the Retrospective Occupation-Industry Supplemental Data Files, newly released by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. This allows us to obtain the most reliable estimates of occupational and industry mobility levels available in the literature. We emphasize the importance of these findings for understanding a number of issues such as the changes in wage inequality, aggregate productivity, job stability, and life-cycle earnings profiles.