Gender and Job Turnover in the Dual Labor Market: A Korean Perspective

Abstract

This study analyzes gender differences in job turnover and performance in the Korean labor market by using a combined dataset consisting of the Ninth and Tenth year waves of the KLIPS (Korean Labor & Income Panel Study). The results of this empirical analysis show that the female workers in the dataset had a higher turnover rate, by a margin of 9.5 percent compared to male workers. Further, the results suggest that voluntariness and change in employment type are key variables that determine the direction of wage changes. If the turnover was involuntary and separated from regular jobs, the accompanying wage loss will be the greatest among all forms of voluntary turnover. The wage loss of involuntary female turnover separated from regular jobs was much greater than the wage loss of the comparable male turnover. This may be because the involuntary female turnover from regular jobs is likely to be a movement from the core labor market to the peripheral labor market. The estimation results with respect to the determinants of wage changes also suggest that turnover, resulting in a change in market structure, has a greater impact on the wage change than the occupation or industry change within the same core or peripheral market. Even if it is generally true that personal characteristics are important determinants in wage changes, in the process of turnover productive traits such as education and work experience in a large firm reward male turnover more so than female turnover.