## What's Up with U.S. Wage Growth and Job Mobility?

_IMF Working Papers, June 28, 2016_

## Source details

**Canonical URL:** [What's Up with U.S. Wage Growth and Job Mobility?](https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2016/12/31/what-s-up-with-u-s-44032)

## Other formats

- [Markdown version](/en/publications/wp/issues/2016/12/31/what-s-up-with-u-s-44032/index.md)
- [Structured JSON version](/en/publications/wp/issues/2016/12/31/what-s-up-with-u-s-44032/index.json)
- [Bundle manifest](/en/publications/wp/issues/2016/12/31/what-s-up-with-u-s-44032/bundle-manifest.json)

## 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*

---

## Content in this bundle

- **_wp16122**
  - [_wp16122 (Markdown version)](/-/media/websites/imf/imported-full-text-pdf/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/_wp16122.pdf.md){rel="alternate" type="text/markdown"}
  - [_wp16122 (PDF)](/-/media/websites/imf/imported-full-text-pdf/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/_wp16122.pdf){rel="external" type="application/pdf"}

---

_Source: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2016/12/31/what-s-up-with-u-s-44032_