Labour Mobility and Earnings in the UK, 1992-2017

We combine information from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) and the UK Longitu-dinal Household Study (UKHLS, a.k.a.Understanding Society) to construct consistent time seriesof aggregate worker stocks, worker flows and earnings in the UK over the 1992-2017. We proposea method to harmonise data between the BHPS and UKHLS, which we validate by checking theconsistency of some of our headline time series with equivalent series produced from other sources,notably by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). In addition to drawing a detailed aggregate picture of the UK labour market over the past two and a half decades, we use our constructed datasetto compare the impact of industry, occupation and employer tenure on wages in the UK. We findthat returns to occupation tenure are substantial. All else equal, 5 years of occupation tenure areassociated with a 3.3% increase in wages. We also find that industry tenure plays a non-negligiblepart in driving wage growth.