Interpreting Panel Data on Job Tenure

Tenure responses in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the National Longitudinal Surveys are often inconsistent with calendar time. These inconsistencies pose special problems in the PSID because job changes cannot be identified directly, so researchers must infer them from error-ridden tenure data. We use alternative rules for partitioning PSID data into jobs and then estimate several wage and mobility models to assess the sensitivity of parameter estimates to the partitioning method. We also assess the importance of replacing "raw" tenure data with imputed measures that are internally consistent.