We examine the period from 1991 to 2005 to document the effects of a changing Japanese labormarket on trends in the cost of job change. During this period, job change penalties and theextent to which they were age-related grew. Evidence is also found of a diminishing specificityin human capital (in industry, occupation and firm size) for job changers in the Japanese labormarket. As might be expected, older workers and workers leaving the largest firms suffered thelargest wage losses from job change. Older workers were also harmed more by involuntary jobseparations. In percentage terms, young females have larger wage losses than young males butolder females have smaller losses than older males. This pattern is masked in considering onlythe overall effect of gender on the cost of job change. |
