It is expected that labor mobility and inter-industry labor turnover would rise due to the rapid changes in the industrial structure and legal institutions of layoffs after the 1997 economic crisis in Korea. One aspect of economic costs of labor mobil...
It is expected that labor mobility and inter-industry labor turnover would rise due to the rapid changes in the industrial structure and legal institutions of layoffs after the 1997 economic crisis in Korea. One aspect of economic costs of labor mobility is demise of accumulated skills of workers. Workers` skills could be decomposed into three parts, general skills, firm-specific skills, and industry-specific skills. Using data from the panal data of Korea Labor Institute(KLIPS), I show that the net return to seniority is markedly reduced once industry-experience are controlled for. The returns to industry-specific experience are relatively high. Particularly, the experience in one-digit industry is more important for the white-collar workers, while the experience in three-digit industry is also important for the blue-collar workers. Therefore, it seems that the economic cost of labor mobility would be diverse between the skills and between the working classes.