Unlike gender or race, class background is rarely a focus of research on career progression, or of DEI efforts in elite occupations. Should it be? In this paper, we document a large class gap in career progression in one occupation—U.S. tenure‐track academia—using parental education to proxy for class background. First‐generation college graduates are 10% less likely to be tenured at an R1, are tenured at institutions ranked 11% lower, earn 3% less, and report 5% lower job satisfaction, than their former PhD classmates (from the same institution and field) with a parent with a non‐PhD graduate degree. Neither selection out of academia nor different preferences explain this gap; differential research productivity also plays little role. Instead, likely drivers are differences in cultural and social capital. We also find a class gap in career progression for PhDs who work in industry, suggesting this phenomenon generalizes outside academia.

We analyze the labor market impact of CVS Health’s acquisition of Target’s pharmacy business in December 2015 using Lightcast job postings data. Using differencein- differences and triple-difference designs, we find meaningful negative effects of the merger on posted pay. In our preferred specification, we estimate that the acquisition reduced posted pay in affected labor markets by 2.9%. We test for heterogeneous merger effects by occupational characteristics, finding that the merger caused pay to fall by more in lower-paid occupations than in higher-paid occupations.

If unions raise worker wages, who pays? We provide a comprehensive assessment of firm responses to increased unionization, using changes in the tax deductibility of union dues in Norway as a quasi-exogenous source of variation in firm-level union density. In the average private sector firm, higher union density raises labor costs and leads firms to contract employment and production, lowering profits without increasing the labor share. The incidence is shared: consumers bear part of the cost through higher prices, shareholders through lower profits, and the remainder is offset by productivity improvements. The total wage bill falls, with losses concentrated among less-attached “outsider” workers. Firm responses vary systematically by the degree of market competition. In manufacturing, where firms operate in less competitive product and labor markets, the response is reversed: the average firm expands employment and production, reduces labor markdowns, and does not experience profit declines. Instead, higher labor costs are largely passed on to consumers through higher prices, with the remainder offset by productivity gains. Workers benefit as both wages and employment rise. These patterns suggest that unions can offset employer monopsony power and that firm responses–and therefore who ultimately bears the cost-depend importantly on market structure. Overall, unionization in this setting primarily redistributes from consumers rather than shareholders and has effects that differ sharply across firms, including a reallocation toward larger and more productive firms. We rationalize these patterns using a partial-equilibrium model of union bargaining with product- and labor-market power.