Specialists or generalists? Cross-industry mobility and wages

•This paper investigates the relationship between an occupation’s degree of industry specificity and the job mobility and wages of workers in that occupation.•I measure industry specificity through the concentration of an occupations employment among industries (CEI), in all US states, each year.•I use IV-FE methods to examine the relationship between CEI and wages.•I find that more industry-specific occupations get paid significantly lower wages compared to less specific occupations.•Mechanism: Workers employed in industry-specific occupations change industry and occupation less frequently than workers in less specific occupations. The effect thus seems to work through higher mobility costs.