This paper examines what it means to be a supervisor, in terms of the associated responsibilities—their nature, who is likely to have them, and how they affect wages. The author examines data from a new series of questions on aspects of supervision included in the 1996 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. The results indicate that the wage returns to being a supervisor are not associated with simply having supervisory “status” or a supervisory title, per se, but rather with having associated upper-level supervisory responsibilities. Women were less likely than men to attain supervisory status, and once they did so they were slightly less likely to have higher-level supervisory responsibilities.
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