Trends in Job Instability and Wages for Young Adult Men

Abstract

Data and measurement problems have complicated the debate over trends in job instability in the United States. We compare two cohorts of young white men from the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS), construct a rigorous measure of job change, and confirm earlier findings of a significant increase in job instability. We then benchmark the NLS against other main data sets in the field and conduct a thorough attrition analysis. Extending the analysis to wages, we find that the wage returns to job changing have both declined and become more unequal for young adults, mirroring trends in their long‐term wage growth.