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How Worker Productivity and Wages Grow with Tenure and Experience: The Firm Perspective

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  • Leth-Petersen, Søren
  • Lee, Minjoon
  • Caplin, Andrew
  • Shapiro, Matthew D.
  • Sæverud, Johan

Abstract

How worker productivity evolves with tenure and experience is central to economics, shaping, for example, life-cycle earnings and the losses from involuntary job separation. Yet, worker-level productivity is hard to identify from observational data. This paper introduces direct measurement of worker productivity in a firm survey designed to separate the role of on-the-job tenure from total experience in determining productivity growth. Several findings emerge concerning the initial period on the job. (1) On-the-job productivity growth exceeds wage growth, consistent with wages not being allocative period-by-period. (2) Previous experience is a substitute, but a far less than perfect one, for on-the-job tenure. (3) There is substantial heterogeneity across jobs in the extent to which previous experience substitutes for tenure. The survey makes use of administrative data to construct a representative sample of firms, check for selective non-response, validate survey measures with administrative measures, and calibrate parameters not measured in the survey.

Suggested Citation

  • Leth-Petersen, Søren & Lee, Minjoon & Caplin, Andrew & Shapiro, Matthew D. & Sæverud, Johan, 2022. "How Worker Productivity and Wages Grow with Tenure and Experience: The Firm Perspective," CEPR Discussion Papers 17545, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:17545
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    3. Freund, L. B., 2022. "Superstar Teams: The Micro Origins and Macro Implications of Coworker Complementarities," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2276, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    4. Justine Herve & Helene Purcell & Subha Mani, 2023. "Conscientiousness Matters: How does Personality affect Labor Market Outcomes?," Fordham Economics Discussion Paper Series dp2023-05er:dp2023-05, Fordham University, Department of Economics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Productivity; Tenure; Experience; Wages; Firm survey;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General

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