JOB STABILITY IN THE UNITED-STATES

Two key attributes of a job are its wage and its duration. Much has be en made of changes in the wage distribution in the 1980s, but little a ttention has been given to job durations since Hall. We fill this void by examining the temporal evolution of job retention rates in U.S. la bor markets, using data assembled from the sequence of Current Populat ion Survey job tenure supplements. There have been relative declines i n job stability for some of the groups that experienced the sharpest d eclines in relative wages. However, we find that aggregate job retenti on rates have remained stable.