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Internal Labor Markets and Worker Quits
Author(s) -
FAIRRIS DAVID
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
industrial relations: a journal of economy and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.61
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1468-232X
pISSN - 0019-8676
DOI - 10.1111/j.0019-8676.2004.00350.x
Subject(s) - seniority , promotion (chess) , labour economics , human capital , economics , business , market economy , engineering , politics , political science , law , aerospace engineering
This article uses establishment‐level data to explore the impact of internal labor markets on worker quits. Quits are lower where job ladders are long, pay growth from the bottom to the top of job ladders is high, and seniority is used as a criterion for promotion. Using a system of internal promotion without a commitment to seniority is associated with higher worker quits. These results hold true even when controlling for the specific human capital skills of workers, suggesting that personnel factors other than specific training are responsible both for the existence of internal labor markets and for the impact of internal labor markets on worker quits.