The gender wage gap in East Germany has narrowed by 10 percentage points in transition, but women have experienced much more severe employment difficulties than men. Using the German Socio‐Economic Panel for 1990–94, I show that on balance women have lost relative to men. Almost half the relative wage gain is due to exits from employment of the low skilled, who are disproportionately women. The female employment decline is not primarily voluntary: more than half the gender gap in the hazard rate from employment reflects a general fall in demand for low‐skilled workers. Reduced child care plays no role.

In West Germany during the 1980s, law changes cut the level of unemployment compensation for the unemployed without children and extended the duration of unemployment insurance for unemployed aged over 41. Analysis of these changes using the German Socioeconomic Panel shows that transitions from unemployment for those under 49 were particularly responsive to extensions of unemployment insurance. The implied elasticity for escapes of men to employment is similar to estimates for men in the United States, suggesting that differences in the potential duration of unemployment insurance only partially explain the difference in spell lengths between Germany and the United States.

Following monetary union with west Germany in June 1990, the median real monthly consumption wage of east German workers aged 18-54 rose by 83 in six years. The median real product wage rose by 112. On the other hand, the employment rate fell from 89 to 73 for this age group. The overall employment level, in uenced by early retirements, fell by about a third between 1989 and 1992, when it stabilized. Although east Germany's employment fall is not striking by European transition economy standards, it is an outlier in terms of wage growth, the least dissimilar country being Poland, where real product wages rose about 25 in the years following transition. 1 The east German wage rises, coming on top of the wage rise implicit in the decision to unify the currency at a one for one exchange rate, were pushed through by the powerful union structure

Using the American Community Surveys, I examine the wages of immigrant computer and engineering workers. Immigrants’ higher education gives them a wage advantage over natives, an advantage larger for computer than for engineering workers, and larger in occupation-based samples than in education-based samples. Among holders of engineering degrees, immigrants earn less than natives, penalized by a high return to English proficiency. The results suggest that imperfect English may reduce their occupational advancement, or an unobserved factor may reduce both occupational advancement and the incentive to perfect English. In all samples, top immigrants from the highest-income countries far outearn top natives.

Using the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, I examine how immigrants perform in activities likely to increase U.S. productivity, according to the type of visa on which they first entered the United States. Immigrants who entered on a student/trainee visa or a temporary work visa have a large advantage over natives in wages, patenting, and publishing. Much of the advantage is explained by immigrants' higher education and field of study. Immigrants who entered with legal permanent residence do not outperform natives for any of the outcomes considered. Immigrants are more likely to start companies than similar natives.

This paper examines the mobility of individuals through the wage and earnings distributions, using 1979-1991 data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Lifetime wages will be more equally distributed than wages from any single year if individuals change position in the wage distribution over time. The results suggest that mobility is predominantly within group mobility, reducing wage inequality by 12%-26% over a four-year horizon. A detailed examination of within-group mobility, using year-to-year estimates of transition probabilities among quintiles of the distribution, reveals similar general patterns across all skill groups: mobility declined significantly over the years, especially at the lower end of the wage and earnings distributions.