This paper considers the growth in wages that employees experience
with increasing tenure in a given position. More specifically, the work
presented in this paper seeks to determine how much of this observed wage
growth can be attributed to on-the—job training and how much remains to be
attributed to other factors that might cause wages to increase with tenure
independently of training or productivity. The basic finding of this work
is that on-the-job training appears to explain a substantial share of the
total wage growth experienced in a given position. Indeed, there appears
to be little wage growth remaining to be explained by other factors, once
training is completed or has been held constant.

This paper presents data on airline mechanics at eight of the
largest U.S. airlines and describes the impact of the 1978 Airline
Deregulation Act on their wage rates and employment levels. The major
findings are: (1) up to 1983, real and relative wage rates of airline
mechanics remained more or less constant across firms and over time; (2)
the independence of mechanics’ wage rates from firm-specific employment
conditions after 1978 is consistent with pre-deregulatory experiences;
(3) deregulation contributed to an existing trend of declining
employment; and (4) deregulation did not bring about any systematic
increase in mechanics’ productivity.