Life-cycle earnings role of labor market sorting and job mobility

This paper studies how the underlying factors that determine an individual's wage changes over their life-cycle, how these factors change at di erent education levels, and when a worker makes job-to-job moves. Using a longitudinal matched employer-employee data set from the Portuguese Ministry of Labor; I nd that human capital accumulation and job mobility play an important role in wage growth during the beginning of an individual's career. More speci cally, I nd that after 20 years of work wages increase, on average 41%. A large fraction of the returns to labor market experience is rooted in the returns to general training (25%) but sorting into better paying rms and job/titles is responsible for a signi cant 19% and 10% of the returns to labor market experience, respectively. Job-to-job mobility also enhances life-cycle earning (14%), as does the ability of the worker (32%)