A hobo syndrome? Mobility, wages, and job turnover

Abstract

We present an analysis of labor mobility as a predictor of wages and job turnover. Data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth show that workers with a history of less frequent job changes (stayers) earn higher wages and change jobs less frequently in the future than their more mobile counterparts (movers). These mobility effects on wages and turnover are stronger among more experienced workers, are highly robust across various model specifications, and persist despite corrections for unobserved individual fixed effects. In the second half of the paper we present a simple two period stochastic model of job mobility to study wages across movers and stayers. The model, incorporating salient features of human capital and job search, shows that whether stayers earn more than movers depend on the distribution of outside wage offers and firm-specific wage growth rate. Incorporating heterogeneity of wage growth rates among jobs increases the likelihood that stayers earn more than movers.