I derive a measure of job mobility that reflects individuals ability to sort into the preferred jobs. Relying on the Survey of Income and Program Participation, I find that educational attainment tends to have a strong positive effect on internal (i.e., within firms) and external (i.e., between...

Recent studies document a decline in U.S. labor-market fluidity from as early as the 1970s on. Making use of the Annual Social and Economic supplement to the Current Population Survey, I uncover a pronounced increase in job-to-job mobility from the 1970s to the 1990s, i.e. the annual share of...

In the present paper, I develop an on-the-job search model in which workers face both frictional and structural impediments to sorting. There are two key model predictions. First, versatility enhances the worker’s ability to sort into the most productive firms since a mismatch between the job...

Using an international survey that directly assesses the cognitive skills of the adult population, I study the relation between skills and unemployment flows across 37 countries. Depending on the specifically assessed domain, I document that skills have an unconditional correlation with the...