Determinants of Declining Wage Mobility in the New Economy

• In Event: 528 - Regular Session. Social Mobility: Patterns and Mechanisms

Abstract

The "new economy" is characterized by employment relations that minimizes wages and job security for employees, and by growth at top and bottom of the occupational distribution with little or no job growth in traditional middle class jobs. This study draws from the 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Survey to compare patterns of wage mobility among the late "boomer" and "millennial" cohorts of young men. Estimating group-based trajectory models, we find that wage mobility in both cohorts can be characterized by three trajectory groups. Across the cohorts, fewer men enjoyed rapid wage growth and more men fell into the steady and stagnant wage trajectory groups. Further, employment patterns in the new economy (e.g. changing employers, more part-time employment, employment in low-end service occupations) increasingly determines the mobility rates of millennials compared with boomers. Finally, African Americans are more immobile than Hispanics or whites, suggesting that discrimination against blacks stubborn persists at the turn of the millennium.

Authors

• David J. Maume, University of Cincinnati

• George Wilson, University of Miami