TY  - JOUR
AU  - Abraham,Katharine G.
AU  - Farber,Henry S.
TI  - Returns to Seniority in Union and Nonunion Jobs:  A New Look at the Evidence
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 2368
PY  - 1989
Y2  - April 1989
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2368
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2368.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Katharine G. Abraham
Joint Program in Survey Methodology
1218 LeFrak Hall
University of Maryland
College Park, MD  20742
Tel: 301/405-1004
Fax: 301/314-7912
E-Mail: kabraham@survey.umd.edu

Henry S. Farber
Industrial Relations Section
Firestone Library
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544-2098
Tel: 609/258-4044
Fax: 609/258-2907
E-Mail: farber@princeton.edu
AB  - One of the most prominent features of U.S. unionism is the key role played by seniority. However, in cross-sectional data, the positive association between seniority and earnings is typically much stronger for nonunion workers than for union workers. This finding has puzzled previous researchers, since it seems inconsistent with the generalization that seniority is more important in the union sector than in the nonunion sector. We show that standard estimates of the return to seniority are likely to be biased upward and argue that the bias is likely to be larger in the nonunion sector than in the union sector. Corrected estimates imply that the return to seniority is, in fact, larger in the union sector than in the nonunion sector.
ER  -