Occupational Experience, Mobility, and Wages: Patterns in the Danish Data

In this paper we present how occupational tenure relates to wage growth and occupational mobility in Danish data. We show that the Danish data produces qualitatively similar results as found in U.S. data with respect to an increase in average wages when experience in an occupation increases. In a sample of full time private employed, the first five years of experience in an occupation increases average wages with 8% to 15%, conditional on rm and industry tenure. We further show that the probability of switching occupation declines with experience in the occupation and that the declining hazard also is true for workers switching occupation and rm. After ve years of experience in an occupation the average probability of switching any type of occupation, including occupation and rm switches, has fallen from 25% to 12%.