Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979–96) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1981–91), I seek to determine whether there is any net positive return to tenure with the current employer once we control for industry‐specific capital. Including total experience in the industry as an additional explanatory variable, I show that the return to seniority is markedly reduced using GLS while it virtually disappears using IV-GLS, at both the one‐digit and three‐digit levels. Therefore, it seems that what matters most for the wage profile in terms of human capital is industry‐specificity, not firm‐specificity.