Fathers, Children, and the Intergenerational Transmission of Employers

We document the tendency of fathers in the U.S. to share employers with their sons and daughters. We show that the incidence of sharing employers is much higher than can be explained by the fact that fathers and sons tend to live near each other. Workers early in their careers are much more likely to share their father's employer, as are children of high-earning fathers. We find that children's earnings at shared employers tend to be higher than at unshared jobs, especially for children of high-earning fathers. These facts indicate that employer sharing between fathers and children could explain some component of the intergenerational elasticity of earnings in the United States.