Much evidence suggests that having more education leads to higher earnings in the labor market. However, there is little evidence about whether having more education causes employees to experience lower earnings volatility or shelters them from the adverse effects of recessions. We use a large British administrative panel data set to study the impact of the 1972 increase in compulsory schooling on earnings volatility over the life cycle. Our estimates suggest that men exposed to the law change subsequently had lower earnings variability and less procyclical earnings. However, there is little evidence that education affects earnings volatility of older men.

Since 2000, US real average wages stagnated or declined while Canadian wages increased. We investigate the role of the Canadian resource boom in explaining this difference. We focus on wage spillovers to nonresource workers through a bargaining channel. We find that long-distance commuting to resource regions had substantial spillover effects on noncommuters in sending regions. Through spillovers, we account for 49% of the increase in the real mean wage in Canada between 2000 and 2012. We also find long-distance commuting effects in the United States. We conclude that long-distance commuting integrates regions, spreading benefits and costs of booms across the economy.

We use a résumé audit study to investigate the role of employment and unemployment histories in callbacks to job applications. We find that applicants with 52 weeks of unemployment have a lower callback rate than those with shorter spells. There is no relationship, however, between spell length and callback among applicants with spells of 24 weeks or less. We also find that both younger and older applicants have a lower callback probability than prime-aged applicants. Finally, we find that applicants who are employed at the time of application have a lower callback rate than do unemployed applicants.