Career and Wage Dynamics: Evidence from Linked Employer-Employee Data

We study career and wage dynamics within and between firms using a large linked employer-employee panel dataset spanning 26 years. We construct six-level hierarchies for more than 5,000 firms. We replicate most of the analyses from Baker, Gibbs, and Holmström (1994) and make some extensions. Many of our results corroborate their findings. Careers within firms are important, but the strong version of the theory of internal labor markets does not fit the data. Recent theories of career and wage dynamics explain our findings well.