... at the aggregate level. In particular, they have ignored the changes in the composition of the workforce over the cycle. The presence of compositional effectshas attracted much attention in the ... the Business Cycle Here we examine the extent to which contractual wages, on the one hand, and firm-specificwage arrangements, in the form of the wage cushion, on the other, are sensitive to the 18 ... adds to the empirical literature on wage cyclicality in several ways. The main contribution is the analysis of the impact of the cycle on real wage growth of newhires versus stayers within the same...