The law of one wage does not strictly hold, nor should it be expected to hold, in contemporary labor markets. The law of one wage, however, provides a surprisingly good first approximation of the structure of U.S. wages. This generalization is drawn from research on a diverse set of topics: the...

Nursing shortages are common despite the fact that nurses earn far higher wages than other college-educated women. Our analysis addresses the puzzle of “high” nursing wages. Employee data from the Current Population Survey are matched with detailed job descriptors from the Occupational...