PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jamin D. Speer
TI  - Pre-Market Skills, Occupational Choice, and Career Progression
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.52.1.0215-6940R
DP  - 2016 Mar 08
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2016/03/04/jhr.52.1.0215-6940R.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2016/03/04/jhr.52.1.0215-6940R.full
AB  - This paper develops a new empirical framework for analyzing occupational choice and career progression. I merge the NLSYs with O*Net and find that pre-market skills (primarily ASVAB test scores) predict the task content of the workers’ occupations. These measures account for 71 percent of the gender gap in science and engineering occupations. Career trajectories are similar across workers, so that initial differences in occupation persist over time. I then quantify the effect of layoffs on career trajectory and find that a layoff erases one-fourth of a worker’s total career increase in task content, but this effect only lasts two years.