Job Promotion in Mid-Career: Gender, Recession and ‘Crowding’

Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 indicate that between 1996 and 2010 females on average lost some of the promotion momentum they had achieved at the beginning of mid-career, although they outperformed males in this regard. For both genders economic downturn has contributed to reduced promotion probabilities. In the case of women, however, cohort effects rather than the cycle seem to explain the promotion experience during the Great Recession. Promotions translate into higher real wage increases, and typically more so where job responsibilities increase. Crowding effects, if not necessarily a thing of the past, are no longer manifested in reduced female promotion rates or earnings.