EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Cashier or Consultant? Entry Labor Market Conditions, Field of Study, and Career Success

Joseph Altonji, Lisa Kahn and Jamin D. Speer

Journal of Labor Economics, 2016, vol. 34, issue S1, S361 - S401

Abstract: We measure impacts of entry conditions on labor market outcomes for the US college graduating classes of 1974-2011. A large recession reduces initial earnings by 10%, through full-time work and wages, with small persistent impacts on wages. Those in high-paying majors experience smaller impacts on most labor market outcomes, widening earnings inequality across majors. In the Great Recession, early earnings losses are much larger than predicted given past patterns and the size of the recession. This is partially because the cyclical sensitivity of demand for college graduates has more than doubled. Recession effects also became more evenly distributed across majors.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (206)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/682938 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/682938 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
Working Paper: Cashier or Consultant? Entry Labor Market Conditions, Field of Study, and Career Success (2014) Downloads
Chapter: Cashier or Consultant? Entry Labor Market Conditions, Field of Study, and Career Success (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlabec:doi:10.1086/682938

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Labor Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-24
Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlabec:doi:10.1086/682938