Occupational employment and wage differences across cohorts of establishments

We merge detailed microdata from the Occupational Employment Statistics survey with establishment founding dates from the BLS Longitudinal Database, which allows us to estimate the occupational and wage distributions of employees by the founding dates of their employing establishments. Overall, we find greater employment levels for older establishments—particularly in education, healthcare, and production occupations—but these differences in employment levels are entirely explained by establishment age. Examining wages, we find that, overall, older establishments pay higher hourly wages than younger establishments, and these differences are not entirely explained by establishment age. We also find noticeable differences in patterns of occupational wages across establishments of different ages. In particular, healthcare occupations have higher wages in younger establishments. To our knowledge, this is the first article to examine employment differences by occupation for employer “birth” cohorts, as well as the first to examine wage differences—overall and by occupation—by these employer cohorts.