Recent research by Kambourov and Manovskii (2008a) has documented substantial returns to
occupational tenure: everything else being constant, five years of occupational experience are
associated with an increase in wages of at least 12%. This finding is consistent with human
capital being specific to the occupation in which an individual works (e.g., truck driver,
accountant, chemical engineer). However, despite the apparent costliness of occupational
switching, Kambourov and Manovskii (2008b) found a substantial increase in occupational
mobility over the 1969-1997 period among male workers in the United States. This finding
poses a set of intriguing questions. Why did the occupational mobility of male workers
increase? What happened with the occupational mobility of women? Are the two trends
connected? That is, is there a relationship between the well-documented increase in the
labor force attachment of women and the change in the occupational mobility of men?