General and specific training - Evidence and implications

Using data from the Employer Opportunity Pilot Project (EOPP) survey and th e National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) we explicitly document the s pecificity and generality of employer-provided training, and we analyze how wage growth and mobility are influenced by our direct measures of specific and general training. In spite of the emphasis that labor economists have placed on specific training, we find that employers in the EOPP and workers in the NLSY indicate that most of the skills learned in training are usefu l elsewhere. Our results are consistent with sever al recent models that pr edict that employers will often extract some of the retrims to the general training they provide.