Cyclical Changes in Short-Run Earnings Mobility in Canada, 1982-1996

distributional shift for all workers (men and women together, first panel). But
this hides strong opposite shifts in fact going on within the overall distribu-tion
between men and women. The earnings distribution for men shifted down
strongly over the 1982-96 period as a whole (right-hand column), while the
distribution for women workers shifted even more strongly upward

Table 3: Cross-Sectional Upward/Downward Shift for Men

and Women, Selected Years, 1982-1996

(percentage point changes)

Notes: ¹A(Pv∣∣+P∣∣+P∣∣∖∣) - À(Plm + Pl + Pvl)

²À(Pvh+Ph) - À(Pl + Pvl)

where Pi represents the percentage of workers in earnings interval i.

(see Figure 2). So the two earnings distributions have strongly converged over
the sample period. Also note that the period of most marked distribu-tional
shifts occurred over the 1989-92 period of major recession in Canada.
Indeed, more than half the shifting occurred over this brief interval —
between 58 and 65 per cent of the entire 1982-96 shift for women and 88-
112 per cent for men. By contrast, the recessionary period 1982-83

Charles M. Beach and Ross Finnie

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