Labor market intermittency explains genders' wage differences.(Research Notes and News)

Labor market intermittency explains genders' wage differences.(Research Notes and News)

EconSouth

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March 22, 2007 | Copyright

That workers pay a penalty for exiting and entering the labor force is widely accepted. Typically, such workers earn lower wages than workers who remain in the labor force consistently; recent estimates indicate that intermittent workers earn rougtdy 16 percent lower wages than workers with continuous labor market attachment.

In a recent working paper, Julie L. Hotchkiss and M. Melinda Pitts look at how this intermittent behavior affects the wage differential between genders. Since women are more likely than men to exit the labor force at any given time and since such behavior is penalized in the labor market, it is theorized that some of the observed lower wages of women must be attributable to the intermittent labor market behavior of women. …

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