We construct a novel data set matching occupational data from separate establishments to the establishments' corporate parents, in order to study labor market links across establishments within diverse firms. We find substantial wage components common to all establishments within firms, even after netting out industry and occupation effects. However, employment changes are localized to establishments. The data suggest that internal labor markets of multiestablishment firms are linked throughout their entire organizations, but that establishment-level demand shocks do not permeate the firm.

This article considers the impact of nondiscrimination (ND) rules in the federal tax code. Nondiscrimination rules limit within‐firm inequality in the provision on nonwage benefits, but they place no corresponding limit on within‐firm inequality in wages. Firms can skirt ND rules by moving workers with unusual benefits into part‐time and seasonal positions because workers in such positions are excluded from some ND compliance calculations. We examine these issues empirically and find relationships consistent with the hypothesis that ND rules provide a binding constrain on within‐firms benefits inequality.

Self-employed workers are less likely to be affected by implicit contracts, efficiency wages, and other forces that mute wage cyclicality and exacerbate employment cyclicality. This observation motivates our comparison of the cyclical experience of the self-employed with "wage and salary" workers who clearly have an employer. We find negligible or small differences in annual hours cyclicality between the two groups, but hourly wages and annual earnings are much more cyclical for the self-employed. These results are consistent with efficient contracting models where employers smooth workers' income without causing inefficiencies in hours of work.

Using linked employer-employee data for the United States, we examine whether shocks to firm revenues are transmitted to the earnings of continuing employees. While full insurance is rejected, the elasticity of worker earnings with respect to persistent shocks in firm revenues is small and consistent with the notion that firms insulate workers from idiosyncratic shocks. Exploring the heterogeneity of effects, we find the largest elasticity in professional services among employees in the top 5% of their employers’ earnings distribution, suggesting that in certain jobs performance pay may be a countervailing force to wage insurance.

Using data from the March Current Population Survey, we document an increase over the past 30 years in wage inequality for males. Between 1963 and 1989, real average weekly wages for the least skilled workers (as measured by the tenth percentile of the wage distribution) declined by about 5 percent, whereas wages for the most skilled workers (as measured by the ninetieth percentile of the wage distribution) rose by about 40 percent. We find that the trend toward increased wage inequality is apparent within narrowly defined education and labor market experience groups. Our interpretation is that much of the increase in wage inequality for males over the last 20 years is due to increased returns to the components of skill other than years of schooling and years of labor market experience. Our primary explanation for the general rise in returns to skill is that the demand for skill rose in the United States over this period.

Using data from the March Current Population Survey, the authors document an increase over the past 30 years in wage inequality for males. Between 1963 and 1989, real average weekly wages for the least skilled workers declined by about 5 percent, whereas wages for the most skilled workers rose by about 40 percent. The authors find that the trend toward increased wage inequality is apparent within narrowly defined education and labor market experience groups. Their interpretation is that much of the increase in wage inequality fro males over the last 20 years is due to increased returns to the components of skill other than years of schooling and years of labor market experience.