Women Move Differently: Job Separations and Gender

Using a large German linked employer–employee data set and methods of competing risks analysis, this paper investigates gender
differences in job separation rates to employment and nonemployment. In line with descriptive evidence, we find lower job-to-job
and higher job-to-nonemployment transition probabilities for women than men when controlling for individual and workplace
characteristics and unobserved plant heterogeneity. These differences vanish once we allow these characteristics to affect
separations differently by gender. When additionally controlling for wages, we find that both separation rates are considerably
lower and also significantly less wage-elastic for women than for men, suggesting an interplay of gender differences in transition
behaviour and the gender pay gap.