Productivity and the allocation of skills

David C. Mare, Trinh Le, Richard Fabling and Nathan Chappell

No 290522, Motu Working Papers from Motu Economic and Public Policy Research

Abstract: We use linked employer-employee data from 2004–2012, combined with individual qualifications data from 1994–2012, to study how graduates with different skills fare in the labour market in the six years after studying. We find that graduates experience improvements in earnings, and that they systematically move between jobs, industries and locations in a pattern that is consistent with their securing better job matches, particularly for high level STEM graduates. We then estimate joint production function and wage equations to see how the skill composition of a firm’s employees correlates with productivity, and compare this with how the skill composition correlates with its wage bill. Our results suggest that degree graduates make a growing positive contribution to production in the six years after graduation, with associated wage growth. There is variation in relative productivity and wages across groups of graduates that differ by field of study and level of qualification.

Keywords: Productivity; Analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44
Date: 2017-04
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/290522/files/17_04.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:ags:motuwp:290522

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.290522

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Motu Working Papers from Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().