Employer changes and their effects on wages. Differences between genders and between different types of job mobility among German university graduates

Abstract

ABSTRACT Changes in wages and other job characteristics during an individual’s career are often the result of job mobility. Using a sample of Bavarian university graduates, this work analyses the effects that employer changes have on men’s and women’s wages. For this, employer changes are grouped into three categories in order to account for different circumstances. Partly in contrast to previous research, the results show significant and positive effects of job mobility, irrespective of gender and of the type of employer change. However, financial returns are lower in case of changes for personal reasons and – at least when absolute instead of relative changes are analysed – for women. This can be explained largely by different circumstances which personal employer changes occur in and which women experience. The results are discussed with respect to the specifics of the German labour market structure and to gender segregation on the labour market.