Econ Papers Daily / 工作论文
职业阶梯：对生命周期工资动态的影响
The Occupational Ladder: Implications for Life-Cycle Wage Dynamics
摘要
Some occupations pay higher wages than others, even conditional on worker characteristics, implying that occupations can be ranked on a ladder. We develop a simple decomposition to study the role this occupational ladder plays in average wage growth and in the fanning out of wages over the life cycle. We present three main findings. First, the distribution of employment shifts towards higher-paying occupations as workers gain experience. This contributes modestly to average life-cycle wage growth, with greatest impact in early career. Second, this upward movement in the occupational employment distribution is not accompanied by increasing dispersion; thus, the occupational ladder does not directly contribute to the fanning out of wages. Third, early-career workers who are well-positioned on the occupational ladder tend to earn wages far below the occupational average. However, by mid-career, workers’ relative wages within occupations (their positions on the job ladder) no longer depend on their occupation. This change in the covariance between individuals’ positions on the job and occupational ladders is a major contributor to the fanning out of wages over workers’ careers.
中文摘要
即使以工人特征为条件，一些职业的工资也高于其他职业，这意味着职业可以按阶梯排序。我们开发了一个简单的分解方法，以研究这种职业阶梯在平均工资增长和生命周期工资分化中的作用。我们提出三个主要发现。第一，随着工人获得经验，就业分布向更高薪职业转移。这对平均生命周期工资增长贡献不大，但在职业生涯早期影响最大。第二，职业就业分布的向上移动并未伴随离散度的增加；因此，职业阶梯并不直接导致工资分化。第三，在职业阶梯上处于有利位置的早期职业工人往往挣得的工资远低于职业平均水平。然而，到职业生涯中期，工人在职业内的相对工资（他们在工作阶梯上的位置）不再取决于其职业。个体在工作阶梯和职业阶梯上的位置之间协方差的这种变化，是工人职业生涯中工资分化的主要贡献因素。