Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Features of Japan's internal labor markets
- 1 Internal labor markets in search equilibrium
- 2 Demand and supply of skills in a corporate hierarchy
- 3 Measuring occupational and internal labor markets
- 4 Earnings and seniority in internal labor markets
- 5 Recruitment and promotion in Japanese firms
- 6 Product market competition and internal labor markets
- Part II Recent changes in wage and employment structures
- Epilog
- References
- Index
3 - Measuring occupational and internal labor markets
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Features of Japan's internal labor markets
- 1 Internal labor markets in search equilibrium
- 2 Demand and supply of skills in a corporate hierarchy
- 3 Measuring occupational and internal labor markets
- 4 Earnings and seniority in internal labor markets
- 5 Recruitment and promotion in Japanese firms
- 6 Product market competition and internal labor markets
- Part II Recent changes in wage and employment structures
- Epilog
- References
- Index
Summary
Overview
This chapter and chapters 4 and 5 follow up the theoretical insights of chapters 1 and 2 and focus on relevant empirical aspects of Japanese internal and occupational labor markets, including the classification of firms and occupations into different modes of organizing labor, earnings profiles, and internal promotion.
In this chapter we look at criteria for classifying occupations into internal (ILM) and occupational (OLM). After developing an operational measure of the degree of internalization of an occupation, we apply it to the analysis of earnings profiles and test whether these profiles are steeper in ILM occupations, as implied by the theory developed in chapter 2. A brief summary concludes the chapter.
Review of the literature
Key features of internal labor markets are that
employees enter the firm at a limited number of ports of entry and progress along well defined job ladders. Wage setting is administered via a series of bureaucratic procedures which, at the minimum, delay and diffuse market forces. Well defined procedures and company norms govern job security rules. Training typically is on-the-job and firm-specific. This plus limited ports of entry makes inter-firm mobility difficult.
(Osterman, 1982, p. 350)ILM employment systems usually coexist within a single firm and industry with alternative, and often complementary, ways of organizing labor, including occupational and secondary labor markets. Occupational, or craft, systems are often characterized by greater mobility and more loyalty to the skill or profession than to the firm.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Internal Labour Markets in Japan , pp. 68 - 95Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000