苹果淫院

"The Intergenerational Transmission of Employers and the Earnings of Young Workers"

(Opportunity Insights)
September 12, 2023, 12:00 to 1:00 PM
Leacock 429

Abstract:聽To what extent do connections in the labor market shape intergenerational mobility? I use employer-employee linked data to study one important type of connection: jobs obtained at a parent鈥檚 employer. 29 percent of individuals work for a parent鈥檚 employer at least once by age 30. Exploiting transitory and idiosyncratic variation in the availability of jobs at the parent鈥檚 employer, I estimate that working for a parent鈥檚 employer increases initial earnings by 19 percent. The results are attributable to parents using their connections to provide access to higher-paying firms. Individuals with higher-earning parents are more likely to work for a parent鈥檚 employer and experience larger earnings gains when they do. Consequently, the elasticity of initial earnings with respect to parental earnings would be 7.2 percent lower if no one found a job through these connections. The findings raise the possibility that connections to firms through one鈥檚 social network could be an important determinant of intergenerational mobility.