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Author: Snipes, Jason Christopher
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Snipes, Jason Christopher |
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Skill Mismatch, Turnover, and the Development of Young Workers' Careers: The Role of Information in the Labor Market Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1998 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning Keyword(s): Industrial Relations; Job Turnover; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Racial Differences; Skilled Workers; Skills; Wage Differentials This study explores the relationship between information about young workers' reading and math skills and the development of their careers. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, it exploits the availability of measures of cognitive skills that are not directly observed by employers in order to ascertain whether time spent in the labor market results in a stronger relationship between workers' skills and the skill requirements in their current occupations. The results indicate that the distance between an individual's reading and math skills and the average level of those skills among workers in his occupation captures an important dimension of skill mismatch, and that labor market experience is associated with reductions in skill mismatch. The analysis also reveals a positive association between match quality and years of schooling beyond high school. Importantly, while labor market experience is significantly associated with reductions in skill mismatch among white workers,this is not the case for their black counterparts. In particular, while "over-qualified" white workers move into "higher skill" occupations during their first few years in the labor market, "over-qualified" black workers with the same measured level of reading and math skills do not. The analysis also reveals a significant relationship between skill mismatch and probability of job turnover in any given month. In particular, the farther a worker is above the average level of unobserved reading and math skills in his current occupation, the more likely the worker is to leave his job. However, the farther below the average level of skill a worker is, the less likely he is to leave his current job. Surprisingly, while the analysis reveals only weak support for the hypothesis that the relationship between skills and turnover differs by race among "over-qualified" workers, significant racial differences in the relationship between skill mismatch and turnover do seem to exist among "under-qualified" workers. Overall, the results reported here provide support for theories of statistical discrimination (such as that put forth by Oettinger, 1996) which argue that the black-white wage differential develops over time as a result of the difficulty black workers face moving into better jobs. |
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Bibliography Citation
Snipes, Jason Christopher. Skill Mismatch, Turnover, and the Development of Young Workers' Careers: The Role of Information in the Labor Market. Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1998. |