What's Up with U.S. Wage Growth and Job Mobility?
IMF Working Papers, June 28, 2016
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: Stephan Danninger
- Published: June 28, 2016
- Series: IMF Working Papers
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9781498335232.001
Key findings on wage growth
- Since the global financial crisis, US wage growth has been sluggish.
- Analysis uses individual earnings data from the 2000–15 Current Population Survey.
- The drawn-out cyclical labor market repair—likely owing to low entry wages of new workers—slowed down real wage growth.
- For full-time, full-employed workers, the Wage-Phillips curve—the empirical relationship between wage growth and the unemployment rate—has become horizontal after 2008.
Key findings on job mobility and labor reallocation
- Job-turnover rates have continued to decline.
- Job-to-job transitions—associated with higher wage growth—have slowed across all skill and age groups and beyond what local labor market conditions would imply.
- The slowdown in job-to-job transitions raises concerns about the allocative ability of the labor market to adjust to changing economic conditions.
Analytical implications
- Cyclical factors: Protracted labor market repair and low entry wages for new workers are important contributors to weak real wage growth.
- Structural factors: Changes in the Wage-Phillips relationship after 2008 and persistent declines in job turnover suggest structural shifts affecting how wage growth responds to unemployment and mobility.
- Policy-relevant concern: Reduced job-to-job mobility may limit the labor market’s capacity to reallocate workers in response to evolving demand and productivity patterns.
Stephan Danninger. "What's Up with U.S. Wage Growth and Job Mobility?", IMF Working Papers 2016, 122 (2016), accessed 9/17/2026, https://doi.org/10.5089/9781498335232.001