1887

OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers

This series is designed to make available to a wider readership selected labour market, social policy and migration studies prepared for use within the OECD. Authorship is usually collective, but principal writers are named. The papers are generally available only in their original language - English or French - with a summary in the other.

English, French

Job mobility, reallocation and wage growth

A tale of two countries

This paper analyses the role of job mobility for job reallocation and aggregate wage growth in Norway and the United States using linked employer-employee data. It provides four main findings. First, despite lower overall job mobility in Norway, the speed of worker reallocation from low-wage to high-wage firms is similar to that in the United States. Second, job reallocation tends to be counter-cyclical in Norway, but pro-cyclical in the United States, due to the weaker tendency of high-wage firms in the United States to hoard workers during economic downturns. Third, the reallocation of workers from low to high wage firms through job-to-job mobility disproportionately benefits high-skilled workers in Norway and low-skilled workers in the United States. Fourth, the slowdown in aggregate wage growth primarily reflects a weakening of on-the-job wage growth in both countries rather than a reduced role of job reallocation between low and high-wage firms (although this does also play a role in the United States).

English

JEL: J31: Labor and Demographic Economics / Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs / Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials; J62: Labor and Demographic Economics / Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers / Job, Occupational, and Intergenerational Mobility
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