Spot wages, job changes, and the cycle

Abstract

This paper makes use of the British New Earnings Survey Panel Dataset between 1976 and 2010. Individual‐level pay and hours data are obtained from company payrolls and consist of a random sample of 1% of the entire British male and female labor force. We find that the real wages of both male and female workers who change job titles within companies are significantly more procyclical than job stayers. Wage cyclicality of internal job movers who retain their job titles is the same as that of job stayers. This lends support to the predicted procyclical real wage effects of the Reynolds‐Reder‐Hall job re‐grading hypothesis. On the extensive margin, title changers and title retainers who move jobs between companies exhibit the same degrees of wage cyclicality and these are significantly greater than for job stayers. We argue that our findings are compatible with earlier research that has established the importance of spot market wage setting in Britain.