In the right place at the wrong time

the role of firms and luck in young workers' careers

Edición de la obra In the right place at the wrong time

"We exploit administrative data on young German workers and their employers to study the long-term effects of an early job loss. To account for non-random sorting of workers into firms with different turnover rates and for selective job mobility, we use changes over time in firm- and age-specific labor demand as an instrument for displacement. We find that wage losses of young job losers are initially 15% but fade to zero within five years. Only workers leaving very large establishments suffer persistent losses. A comparison of estimators implies that initial sorting, negative selection, and voluntary job mobility may have biased previous U.S. studies finding permanent effects of early displacements"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.