This paper investigates the extent to which people spend careers on minimum wage jobs. We find that a small but non-trivial number of NLSY respondents spend 25%, 50%, or even 75% of the first ten years of their career on minimum or near-minimum wage jobs. Workers with these minimum wage careers...

The earnings of workers are reduced for many years after being displaced from their jobs, and those workers and their families face increased risk of other problems as well. The ills suffered by displaced workers motivated several recent expansions of government programs, including the...

This article uses a two-industry model of unemployment duration and job search to estimate rates of transition of displaced workers from unemployment to employment, distinguishing between employment in a worker's previous industry and in other industries. The competing-risks model allows...

This study simultaneously estimates the likelihoods that a worker receives advance notice of a plant closing and that a notified worker quits the job before its scheduled end. The author finds that fear of early attrition is a significant determinant of a firm's decision to provide advance...

The author analyzes job search behavior of unemployed workers who may search for work in several sectors of the economy. Although reservation wages are equal in each sector, workers search more intensively in sectors with lower layoff rates. Thus workers more quickly find and accept jobs with...

The rate of transition from unemployment to re-employment for a sample of displaced workers is estimated using a semiparametric specification which allows the effects of unemployment insurance benefits to vary over time. Three results which would be missed by more restrictive specifications...

This paper assesses the relative contribution of the public and private sectors, through their employment and wages, to the black/white wage convergence that occurred in the U.S. economy over the 1963-92 period. Applying standard decomposition methods to Current Population Survey data, the...