Labour Mobility and Earnings in the UK, 1992-2017

We combine information from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) and the UK Longitudinal Household Study (UKHLS, a.k.a. Understanding Society) to construct consistent time series of aggregate worker stocks, worker flows and earnings in the UK over the 1992-2017. We propose a method to harmonise data between the BHPS and UKHLS, which we validate by checking the consistency of some of our headline time series with equivalent series produced from other sources, notably by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). In addition to drawing a detailed aggregate picture of the UK labour market over the past two and a half decades, we use our constructed dataset to compare the impact of industry, occupation and employer tenure on wages in the UK. We find that returns to occupation tenure are substantial. All else equal, 5 years of occupation tenure are associated with a 3.3% increase in wages. We also find that industry tenure plays a non-negligible part in driving wage growth.