During the last 25 years, annual hours worked by prime aged men fell by the equivalent of six 40-hour workweeks. The reduction was more pronounced among those younger than among mid-age workers, among black men than among white men, and among those with less schooling. Thus hours worked not only fell but showed increased dispersion, increases that paralleled the growth in wage dispersion that has become so familiar to students of trends in wages. The argument advanced here is that the correspondence is not coincidental; the changes in hours worked are simply the labor supply responses that follow the changes in the structure of wages.

Trends in wages and employment of black men are contradictory. Wages are rising and employment is falling. The article first describes employment trends using data from the five decennial censuses, 1940-80, noting that education is becoming a more important determinant of participation. Next, it is shown that ratios of average wages have not been severely biased by falling participation of those who would earn the least if they worked. The final question asks whether falling participation of black men results from deteriorating job opportunities or from falling labor supply; falling supply appears to dominate.

Affirmative action remains controversial. The controversy extends from the original antidiscrimination legislation and its interpretation to estimates of affirmative action's effect on the labor market. This paper provides a progress report on our recent efforts at detecting the effects of affirmative action on minority wages and employment. Although we find a substantial increase in wages for black men and black women over our sample period, the timing of these wage changes is surprising. Most of the wage gains came prior to 1974, before the establishment of an effective monitoring structure for affirmative action. Indeed, when the powers of the EEOC and OFCC are greatest, the wage effects for young blacks are somewhat perverse. Using EEO-1 reports we find a major shift in black employment toward firms most vulnerable to the monitoring and potential sanctions of the affirmative action programs. As with wages, the shift in minority employment came prior to the expansion of the powers and budgets of the EEOC and OFCC. We are surprised by the timing of these changes and are concerned about the quality of the EEO-1 reports.

We use the Current Population Survey to describe what we believe are the most salient aspects of labor force behavior of older men and women during the last 2 decades. First, we show that early retirement has increased dramatically, and this trend continued through the 1980s. Second, we show that the factors that most sharply distinguish propensities toward early retirement are those usually associated with low wages. Third, we show that trends in reduced participation for older men parallel those for younger men, while a pattern of increasing female participation is to be expected given the behavior of younger cohorts.

The "human capital earnings function," in which earnings are expressed as a quadratic in potential experience, is probably the most widely accepted empirical specification in economics. In spite of its widespread acceptance, the human capital earnings function provides a very poor approximation of the true empirical relationship between earnings and experience. The standard formulation understates early career earnings growth by about 30%-50% and overstates midcareer growth by 20%-50%. However, simple alternative specifications that fit the data are available.

The size and rapid growth of the Hispanic population in the United States raise many questions about the effects of language on the process of economic assimilation. This paper uses data on earnings for 1975 to explore the role of English language proficiency in the assimilation of Hispanic men into the U.S. labor market. The results are strong: differences associated with English language skills explain virtually all of the Hispanic wage differences usually attributed to ethnicity, national origin, and time in the United States. The analysis is completed by relating the measure of English language proficiency to assimilation-related variables.

This article considers the representativeness of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) over its 14-year history from 1968 to 1981 given the dynamics of entry and exit from the panel. By 1981, 40% of the original members had left the sample and were replaced by new entrants who joined either existing households or new households being formed by members of the original sample. We consider the distribution of demographic characteristics and earnings equations over time, and we compare the PSID with the Current Population Survey (CPS). By either approach we find little evidence that the PSID has become unrepresentative.