Earnings on the information technology roller coaster: insight from matched employer-employee data

Hotchkiss, Julie L. and Pitts, M. Melinda and Robertson, John (2006): Earnings on the information technology roller coaster: insight from matched employer-employee data. Published in: Southern Economic Journal , Vol. 73, No. 2 (October 2006): pp. 342-361.

Abstract

This article uses matched employer-employee data for the State of Georgia to examine workers' earnings experience through the information technology (IT) sector's employment boom of the mid-1990's and bust in the early 2000s. The results show that even after controlling for pre-boom individual characteristics, transitioning out of the IT sector to a non-IT industry generally resulted in a large wage penalty. However, IT service workers who transitioned to a non-IT industry still fared better than workers who took a non-IT employment path. For IT manufacturing workers, there is no benefit to having been touched by technology, likely because of the nontransferability of manufacturing experience to other industries.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: push-pull; migration; information technology; administrative data; profit analysis
• Subjects: R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics > R5 - Regional Government Analysis > R58 - Regional Development Planning and Policy; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers > J61 - Geographic Labor Mobility ; Immigrant Workers; R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics > R2 - Household Analysis > R23 - Regional Migration ; Regional Labor Markets ; Population ; Neighborhood Characteristics

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