Promotion signaling, gender, and turnover: New theory and evidence

•We extend promotion signaling theory to incorporate gender and across-firm mobility.•We find evidence of the signaling role of promotion for some groups.•We find evidence that women are less “Visible” than men in the labor market.

We extend promotion signaling theory to incorporate gender and across-firm mobility (within and across job levels). Evidence from worker-firm-linked Finnish panel data supports our theory for some groups. Controlling for worker performance (inferred from performance-related pay), within-firm promotion probabilities are increasing (and wage increases from promotion are decreasing) in educational attainment for some educational groups, with results stronger for first than for subsequent promotions. Women have lower promotion probabilities than men and a greater sensitivity of promotion probability to educational attainment. Across-firm promotions are rare but bring wage increases exceeding those for internal promotions and across-firm lateral moves.