We examine effects of entering the labor market during a recession on subsequent earnings and employment for Japanese and American men, using comparable household labor force surveys. Previous analyses focus on search theoretic and implicit-contract arguments, which have their strongest effects on more educated workers. We argue that, in a country like Japan which has a dual labor market, there is an additional mechanism that affects mainly less educated workers. Namely, these workers are more likely to be trapped in the secondary sector if they graduate during a recession. We find a persistent, strong negative effect on earnings for less educated Japanese men, in contrast to no long-term effect for less educated American men; also, a substantial part of the effect for less educated Japanese men is attributed to the decreased probability of regular employment. The effect for the more educated group is more or less similar in both countries.

This study examines the differential effects of the unemployment rate at labor market entry, defined as the time of leaving school, on subsequent wages across gender and race using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 79. Results suggest that the negative effect of a recession at entry on wages is weaker for women. The differences between blacks and whites are not statistically significant for both genders. These results are robust to controlling for the endogenous timing and location of entry, using an instrumental variable based on the predicted year of graduation and the state of residence at age 14.JEL codes: J01, J14, J16.

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Unemployment rates, Marriage, Fertility, J12, J13,