Transitions between unemployment and low pay

We model transitions between unemployment, low-paid and high-paid employment by British men using a first order Markov model with endogenous switching that also takes into account the endogeneity of initial conditions, selection into employment, and sample attrition. Our estimates indicate that all three selectivity issues are non-ignorable. We demonstrate several interrelationships between the dynamics of (un)employment and low-paid work between one year and the next, represented by forms of (cross-)state dependence. Controlling for heterogeneity, the probability of a man having a low-paid job in one year depends not only whether he had a job a year before but also whether that job was low paid. The probability of his being employed at all depends on whether he had a job the previous year.