The fundamental contention of this article is that the institutional environment encompassing a worker's career origins has important and long-lasting effects on subsequent career developments. Empirically, we demonstrate that industry of first job after school is a significant and strong predictor of earnings and occupational SEI for workers late in their careers. This finding holds despite controls for a number of relevant human capital and other variables, including current job industry. The final section of this article explores the ways in which organizational structures of first jobs exert their effects and finds that first job industry growth rates and product market characteristics are important predictors of subsequent earnings. In conclusion, we argue that these results support the relevance of institutional environments in shaping long-term career developments, but that the ways in which institutions affect careers are complex and only poorly understood.
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